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THE 




ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 



LUDWft/F] 



fonslflfei from tin ItnnA fttmmt ffi&m, 

BY 

MARIAN EYANS, 

TRANSLATOR OF " STRAUSS's LIFE OF JESUS." 



NEW YORK: 

PUBLISHED BY CALVIN BLANCHARD, 

82 NASSAU STREET. 

1855. 



\n ; '' 




ECKLER, PRINTER, 

27 FULTON STREET, N. Y. 






• 



PREFACE 



THE SECOND EDITION. 



The clamour excited by the present work has not stir- 
prised me, and hence it has not in the least moved me 
trom my position. On the contrary, I have once more, 
m all calmness, subjected my work to the severest 
scrutiny, both historical and philosophical ; I have as 
far as possible, freed it from its defects of form, and 
enriched it with new developments, illustrations and 
Historical testimonies,— testimonies in the highest de- 
gree striking and irrefragable. Now that I have thus 
verified my analysis by historical proofs, it is to be 
Hoped that readers whose eyes are not sealed will be 
convinced and will admit, even though reluctantly, 
that my work contains a faithful, correct translation 
ol tne Christian religion out of the oriental language 
of imagery into plain speech. And it has no preten- 
sion to be anything more than a close translation, or, 
to speak literally, an empirical or historico-philoso- 
plncal analysis, a solution of the enigma of the Chris- 
tian religion. The general propositions which I pre- 
mise in the Introduction are no a priori, excogitated 
propositions, no products of speculation : they have 
arisen out of the analysis of religion : they are only, 
as indeed are all the fundamental ideas of the work 
generalizations from the known manifestations of hu- 
man nature, and in particular of the religious con- 
sciousness,— facts converted into thoughts, i. e., ex- 



4 PREFACE. 

pressed in general terms, and thus made the property 
of the understanding. /The ideas of my work are only 
conclusions, consequences, drawn from premises which 
are not themselves mere ideas, but objective facts 
either actual or historical — facts which had not their 
place in my head simply in virtue of their ponderous 
existence in folio. I unconditionally repudiate absolute, 
immaterial, self-sufficing speculation, — that speculation 
which draws its material from within. I differ toto ccelo 
from those philosophers who pluck out their eyes that 
they may see better ; for my thought I require the senses, 
especially sight ; I found my ideas on materials which 
can be appropriated only through the activity of the 
senses. I do not generate the object from the thought, 
but the thought from the object ; and I hold that alone 
to be an object which has an existence beyond one's 
own brain./ I am an idealist only in the region of 
practical philosophy, that is, J do not regard the limits 
of the past and present as the limits of humanity, of 
the future ; on the contrary, I firmly believe that many 
things, — yes, many things — which, with the short- 
sighted, pusillanimous practical men of to-day, pass for 
flights of imagination, for ideas never to be realized, 
for mere chimeras, will to-morrow, i. e., in the next 
century, — centuries in individual life are days in the 
life of humanity — exist in full reality. Briefly, the 
" Idea" is to me only faith in the historical future, in 
the triumph of truth and virtue ; it has for me only a 
political and moral significance^ for in the sphere of 
strictly theoretical philosophy, I attach myself, in 
direct opposition to the Hegelian philosophy, only to 
realism, to materialism in the sense above indicated. 
The maxim hitherto adopted by speculative philoso- 
phy : all that is mine I carry with me, the old omnia 
mea mecum porto, I cannot, alas ! appropriate. 1 have 
many things outside myself, which I cannot convey 
either in my pocket or my head, but which neverthe- 
less I look upon as belonging to me, not indeed as a 
mere man — a view not now in question — but as a 



PREFACE. 5 

philosopher. I am nothing but a natural philosopher 
in the domain of mind ; and the natural philosopher 
can do nothing without instruments, without material 
means. In this character I have written the present 
work, which consequently contains nothing else than 
the principle of a new philosophy verified practically, 
i. e., in concreto, in application to a special object, but 
an object which has a universal significance: namely, 
to religion, in which this principle is exhibited, deve- 
loped and thoroughly carried out. \ This philosophy 
is essentiallv distinguished from the systems hitherto 
prevalent, in that it corresponds to the real, complete 
nature of man; but for that very reason it is antago- 
nistic to minds perverted and crippled by a superhu- 
man, i. e., anti-human, anti-natural religion and specu- 
lation. It does not, as I have already said elsewhere, 
regard the pen as the only fit organ for the revelation 
of truth, but the eye and ear, the hand and foot; it 
does not identify the idea of the fact with the fact 
itself, so as to reduce real existence to an existence on 
paper, but it separates the two, and precisely by this 
separation attains to the fact itself; it recognises as 
the true thing, not the thing as it is an object of the 
abstract reason, but as an object of the real, com- 
plete man, and hence as it is itself a real, complete 
thing. This philosophy does not rest on an Under- 
standing per se, on an absolute, nameless understand- 
ing, belonging one knows not to whom, but on the 
understanding of man ; — though not, I grant, on that 
of man enervated by speculation and dogma ; — and it 
speaks the language of men, not an empty, unknown 
tongue. Yes, both in substance and in speech, it 
places philosophy in the negation of philosophy, i. e., it 
declares that alone to be the true philosophy which is 
converted in succum et sanguinem, which is incarnate 
in Man ; and hence it finds its highest triumph in the 
fact that to all dull and pedantic minds, which place 
the essence of philosophy in the show of philosophy, it 
appears to be no philosophy at all. 



6 PREFACE. 

] This philosophy has for its principle, not the Sub- 
stance of Spinoza, not the ego of Kant and Fichte, not 
the Absolute Identity of Schelling, not the Absolute 
Mind of Hegel, in short, no abstract, merely concep- 
tional being, but a real being, the true Ens realissimum 
— man ; its principle, therefore, is in the highest de- 
gree positive and real. It generates thought from 
the opposite of thought, from Matter, from existence, 
from the senses ; it has relation to its object first 
through the senses, u e., passively, before defining it 
in thought. Hence my work, as a specimen of this 
philosophy, so far from being a production to be placed 
in the category of Speculation, — although in another 
point of view it is the true, the incarnate result of 
prior philosophical systems, — is the direct opposite of 
speculation, nay, puts an end to it by explaining it. 
Speculation makes religion say only what it has itself 
thought, and expressed far better than religion ; it 
assigns a meaning to religion without any reference 
to the actual meaning of religion; it does not look be- 
yond itself. I, on the contrary, let religion itself speak; 
I constitute myself only its listener and interpreter, not 
its prompter. Xot to invent, but to discover, " to un- 
veil existence," has been my sole object; to see cor- 
rectly, my sole endeavour. It is not I, but religion 
that worships man, although religion, or rather theo- 
logy, denies this ; it is not I, an insignificant indivi- 
dual, but religion itself that says: God is man, man is 
God: it is not I, but religion that denies the God who 
18 not man, but only an ens rationis, — since it makes 
God become man, and then constitutes this God, not 
distinguished from man, having a human form, human 
feelings and human thoughts, the object of its worship 
and veneration. 1 have only found the key to the 
cipher of the Christian religion, only extricated its 
true meaning from the web of contradictions and de- 
lusions called theology : — but in doing so 1 have cer- 
tainly committed a sacrilege. If therefore my work 
is negative, irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered 



PREFACE. 



7 



that atheism — at least in the sense of this work — is 
the secret of religion itself ; that religion itself, not 
indeed on the surface, but fundamentally, not in inten- 
tion or according to its own supposition, but in its 
heart, in its essence, believes in nothiug else than the 
truth and divinity of human nature. Or let it be 
proved that the historical as well as the rational argu- 
ments of my work are false ; let them be refuted — 
not, however, 1 entreat, by judicial denunciations, or 
theological jeremiads, by the trite phrases of specula- 
tion, or other pitiful expedients for which I have no 
name, but by reasons, and such reasons as I have not 
already thoroughly answered. 

Certainly, my work is negative, destructive; but, 
be it observed, only in relation to the inhuman, not 
to the human elements of religion. It is therefore 
divided into two parts, of which the first is, as to its 
main idea, positive, the second, including the appendix, 
not wholly but in the main, negative; in both, how- 
ever, the same positions are proved, only in a different 
or rather opposite manner. The first exhibits religion 
in its essence, its truth, the second exhibits it in its 
contradictions ; the first is development, the second 
polemic; thus the one is, according to the nature of 
the case, calmer, the other more vehement. Develop- 
ment advances gently, contest impetuously ; for deve- 
lopment is self-contented at every stage, contest only 
at the last blow. Development is deliberate, but 
contest resolute. Development is light, contest fire. 
Hence results a difference between the two parts even 
as to their form. Thus in the first part I show that 
the true sense of Theology is Anthropology, and there 
is no distinction between the predicates of the divine 
and human nature, and, consequently, no distinction 
between the divine and human subject : I say conse- 
quently, for wherever, as is especially the case in theo- 
logy, the predicates are not accidents, but express the 
essence of the subject, there is no distinction between 
subject and predicate, the one can be put in the place 



8 PREFACE. 

of the other ; on which point I refer the reader to the 
Analytics of Aristotle, or even merely to the Intro- 
duction of Porphyry. In the second part, on the other 
hand, I show that the distinction which is made, or 
rather supposed to be made, between the theological 
and anthropological predicates, resolves itself into an 
absurdity. Here is a striking example. In the first 
part I prove that the Son of God is in religion a real 
son, the son of God in the same sense in which man is 
the son of man, and I find therein the truth, the essence 
of religion, that it conceives and affirms a profoundly 
human relation as a divine relation : on the other hand, 
in the second part I show that the Son of God — not 
indeed in religion, but in theology, which is the reflec- 
tion of religion upon itself, — is not a son in the natural, 
human sense, but in an entirely different manner, con- 
tradictory to Nature and reason, and therefore absurd, 
and I find in this negation of human sense and the hu- 
man understanding, the negation of religion. Accord- 
ingly the first part is the direct, the second the indirect 
proof, that theology is antropology : hence the second 
part necessarily has reference to» the first ; it has no 
independent significance ; its only aim is to show, that 
the sense in which religion is interpreted in the pre- 
vious part of the work must be the true one, because 
the contrary is absurd. In brief, in the first part I 
am chiefly concerned with religion, in the second with 
theology: I say chiefly, for it was impossible to exclude 
theology from the first part, or religion from the second. 
A mere glance will show that my investigation includes 
speculative theology or philosophy, and not, as has been 
here and there erroneously supposed, common theology 
only, a kind of trash from which I rather keep as clear 
as possible, (though, for the rest, I am sufficiently well 
acquainted with it,) confining myself always to the 
most essential, strict and necessary definition of the 
object,* and hence to that definition which gives to an 

* For example, in considering the sacraments, I limit myself to two ; 
for, in the strictest sense (see Luther, t. xvii, p. 558), there are no more. 



PREFACE. 9 

object the most general interest, and raises it above 
the sphere of theology. But it is with theology that 
I have to do, not with theologians ; for I can only 
undertake to characterize what is primary, — the ori- 
ginal, not the copy, principles, not persons, species, not 
individuals, objects of history, not objects of the chroni- 
que scandaleuse. 

If my work contained only the second part, it would 
be perfectly just to accuse it of a negative tendency, 
to represent the proposition : Religion is nothing, is 
an absurdity, as its essential purport. But I by no 
means say (that were an easy task !) : God is nothing, 
the Trinity is nothing, the Word of God is nothing, &c; 
I only show that they are not that which the illusions 
of theology make them, — not foreign, but native myste- 
ries, the mysteries of human nature ; I show that reli- 
gion takes the apparent, the superficial in Nature and 
humanity, for the essential, and hence conceives their 
true essence as a separate, special existence : that con- 
sequently, religion, in the definitions which it gives of 
God, e. g., of the Word of God, — at least in those de- 
finitions which are not negative in the sense above al- 
luded to, — only defines or makes objective the true na- 
ture of the human word. The reproach that according 
to my book, religion is an absurdity, a nullity, a pure 
illusion, would bet well-founded only if, according to it, 
that into which I resolve religion, which I prove to 
be its true object and substance, namely man, — anthro- 
pology, were an absurdity, a nullity, a pure illusion. 
But so far from giving a trivial or even a subordinate 
significance to anthropology, — a significance which is 
assigned to it only just so long as a theology stands 
above it and in opposition to it, — I, on the contrary, 
while reducing theology to anthropology exalt an- 
thropology into theology, very much as Christianity, 
while lowering God into man, made man into God ; 
though, it is true, this human God was by a further 
process made a transcendental, imaginary God, remote 
from man. Hence it is obvious that I do not take the 

A3 



10 PREFACE. 

word anthropology in the sense of the Hegelian or of 
any other philosophy, but in an infinitely higher and 
more general sense. 

Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even 
in dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in 
heaven, but on earth, in the realm of reality ; we only 
see real things in the entrancing splendour of imagin- 
ation and caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of 
reality and necessity. Hence I do nothing more to 
religion — and to speculative philosophy and theology 
also — than to open its eyes, or rather to turn its gaze 
from the internal towards the external, i. e., I change 
the object as it is in the imagination into the object as 
it is in reality. 

But certainly for the present age, which prefers the 
sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, 
fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence, this 
change, inasmuch as it does away with illusion, is an ab- 
solute annihilation, or at least a reckless profanation ; 
for in these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane. 
JTay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion 
as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the 
highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest de- 
gree of sacredness. Religion has disappeared, and for 
it has been substituted, even among Protestants, the 
appearance of religion — the Church — in order at least 
tnat " the faith" may be imparted to the ignorant and 
indiscriminating multitude ; that faith being still the 
Christian, because the Christian churches stand now as 
they did a thousand years ago, and now, as formerly, 
the external signs of the faith are in vogue. That which 
has no longer any existence in faith J( the faith of the 
modern world is only an ostensible faith, a faith which 
does not believe what it fancies that it believes, and is 
only an undecided, pusillanimous unbelief— Jl is still to 
pass current as opinion: that which is no longer sacred 
in itself and in truth, is still at least to seem sacred. 
Hence the simulated religious indignation of the pre- 
sent age, the age of shows and illusion, concerning 



PBEFACE. II 

my analysis, especially of the Sacraments. But let it 
not be demanded of an author who proposes to himself 
as his goal not the favour of his contemporaries, but 
only the truth, the unveiled, naked truth, that he 
should have or feign respect towards an empty ap- 
pearance, especially as the object which underlies this 
appearance is in itself the culminating point of reli- 
gion, i. e., the point at which the religious slides into 
the irreligious. Thus much in justification, not in 
excuse, of my analysis of the Sacraments. 

With regard to the true bearing of my analysis of 
the sacraments, especially as presented in the conclud- 
ing chapter, I only remark, that I therein illustrate by 
a palpable and visible example the essential purport, 
the peculiar theme of my work, that I therein call upon 
the senses themselves to witness to the truth of my ana* 
lysis and my ideas, and demonstrate ad oculos, ad factum, 
ad gustum, what I have taught ad captum throughout 
the previous pages. As, namely, the water of Baptism, 
the wine and bread of the Lord's Supper, taken in their 
natural power and significance, are and effect infinitely 
more than in a supernaturalistic, illusory significance; 
so the object of religion in general, conceived in the 
sense of this work, i. e., the anthropological sense, is 
infinitely more productive and real, both in theory 
and practice, than when accepted in the sense of theo- 
logy. For as that which is or is supposed to be im- 
parted in the water, bread, and wine, over and above 
these natural substances themselves, is something in 
the imagination only, but in truth, in reality, nothing; 
so also the object of religion in general, the Divine 
essence, in distinction from the essence of Nature and 
Humanity, — that is to say, if its attributes, as under- 
standing, love, &c, are and signify something else 
than these attributes as they belong to man and Nature, 
— is only something in the imagination, but in truth 
and reality nothing. Therefore — this is the moral of 
the fable — we should not, as is the case in theology 
and speculative philosophy, make real beings and 



12 PREFACE. 

things into arbitrary signs, vehicles, symbols, or pre- 
dicates of a distinct, transcendant, absolute, i. e., ab- 
stract being; but we shoud accept and understand them 
in the significance which they have in themselves, which 
is identical with their qualities, with those conditions 
which make them what they are : — thus only do we 
obtain the key to a real theory and practice. I, in fact, 
put in the place of the barren baptismal water, the 
beneficent effect of real water. How " watery," how 
trivial ! Yes, indeed, very trivial. But so Marriage, 
in its time, was a very trivial truth, which Luther, on 
the ground of his natural good sense, maintained in 
opposition to the seemingly holy illusion of celibacy. 
But while I thus view water as a real thing, I at the 
same time intend it as a vehicle, an image, an example, 
a symbol, of the " unholy" spirit of my work, just as 
the water of Baptism — the object of my analysis — is at 
once literal and symbolical water. It is the same with 
bread and wine. Malignity has hence drawn the con- 
clusion that bathing, eating and drinking are the sum.- 
ma summarum, the positive result of my work. I 
make no other reply than this : if the whole of religion 
is contained in the Sacraments, and there are conse- 
quently no other religious acts than those which are 
performed in Baptism and the Lord's Supper ; then I 
grant that the entire purport and positive result of my 
work are bathing, eating and drinking, since this work 
is nothing but a faithful, rigid liistorico-philosophical 
analysis of religion — the revelation of religion to it- 
self, the awakening of religion to self-consciousness. 

I say an liistorico-philosophical analysis, in distinction 
from a merely historical analysis of Christianity. The 
historical critic — such a one, for example, as Daumer 
or Ghillany — shows that the Lord's Supper is a rite 
lineally descended from the ancient Cultus of human 
sacrifice ; that once, instead of bread and wine, real 
human flesh and blood were partaken. J, on the con- 
trary, take as the object of my analysis and reduction 
only the Christian significance of the rite, that view 



PREFACE. 13 

of it which is sanctioned in Christianity, and I proceed 
on the supposition that only that significance which a 
dogma or institution has in Christianity (of course in 
ancient Christianity, not in modern,) whether it may 
present itself in other religions or not, is also the true 
origin of that dogma or institution in so far as it is 
/Christian J Again, the historical critic, as, for example, 
/ Lutzelberger, shows that the narratives of the miracles 
I of Christ resolve themselves into contradictions and 
\ absurdities, that they are later fabrications, and that 
consequently Christ was no miracle-worker nor, in 
^general, that which he is represented to be in the Bible^ 
% on the other hand, do not inquire, what the real, 
natural Christ was or may have been in distinction 
from what he has been made or has become in Super- 
naturalism ; on the contrary, I accept the Christ of 
religion, but I show that this superhuman being is no- 
thing else than a product and reflex of the supernatural 
human mind. I do not ask whether this or that, or any 
miracle can happen or not ; I only show what miracle 
is 3 and I show it not a priori, but by examples of mir- 
acles, narrated in the Bible as real events ; in doing 
so, however, I answer or rather preclude the question 
as to the possibility or reality or necessity of miracle. 
Thus much concerning the distinction between me and 
the historical critics who have attacked Christianity. 
As regards my relation to Strauss and Bruno Bauer, 
in company with whom I am constantly named, I 
merely point out here that the distinction between 
our works is sufficiently indicated by the distinction 
between their objects, which is implied even in the^ 
title-page. Bauer takes for the object of his criticism" 
the evangelical history, i. e., biblical Christianity, 
or rather biblical theology ; Strauss, the System of 
Christian Doctrine and the Life of Jesus, (which may 
also be included under the title of Christian Doctrine, 
i. e., dogmatic Christianity or rather dogmatic theo- 
logy ; I, Christianity in general, i. e., the Christian 
religion^ and consequently, only Christian philosophy 



14 PREFACE. 

or theology. Hence I take my citations chiefly from 
men in whom Christianity was not merely a theory or 
a dogma, not merely theology, but religion. My prin- 
cipal theme is Christianity, is Religion, as it is the 
immediate object, the immediate nature, of man. Erudi- 
tion and philosophy are to me only the means by which 
I bring to light the treasure hid in man. 

I must further mention that the circulation which 
my work has had amongst the public at large, was 
neither desired nor expected by me. It is true that I 
have always taken as the standard of the mode of 
teaching and writing, not the abstract, particular, 
professional philosopher, but universal man, that I 
have regarded man as the criterion of truth, and not 
this or that founder of a system, and have from the 
first placed the highest excellence of the philosopher 
in this, that he abstains, both as a man and as an 
author, from the ostentation of philosophy, i. e., that 
he is a philosopher only in reality, not formally, that 
he is a quiet philosopher, not a loud and still less a 
brawling one. Hence, in all my works as well as in 
the present one, I have made the utmost clearness, sim- 
plicity and definiteness, a law to myself, so that they 
may be understood, at least in the main, by every 
cultivated and thinking man. But notwithstanding 
this, my work can be appreciated and fully understood 
only by the scholar, that is to say, by the scholar who 
loves truth, who is capable of forming a judgment, 
who is above the notions and prejudices of the learned 
and unlearned vulgar ; for although a thoroughly inde- 
pendent production, it has yet its necessary logical 
basis in history. I very frequently refer to this or 
that historical phenomenon without expressly designa- 
ting it, thinking this superfluous ; and such references 
can be understood by the scholar alone. Thus, for 
example, in the very first chapter, where I develope 
the necessary consequences of the stand-point of Feel- 
ing, I allude to Jacobi and Schleiermacher ; in the 
second chapter 1 allude chiefly to Kantism, Scepticism, 



PREFACE. 15 

Theism, Materialism and Pantheism ; in the chapter 
on the " Stand-point of Religion," where I discuss the 
contradictions between the religious or theological 
and the physical or natural-philosophical view of 
Nature, I refer to philosophy in the age of orthodoxy, 
and especially to the philosophy of Descartes and 
Leibnitz, in which this contradiction presents itself in 
a peculiarly characteristic manner. The reader, there- 
fore, who is unacquainted with the historical facts and 
ideas presupposed in my work, will fail to perceive on 
what my arguments and ideas hinge ; no wonder if my 
positions often appear to him baseless, however firm 
the footing on which they stand. It is true that the 
subject of my work is of universal human interest ; 
moreover, its fundamental ideas, though not in the 
form in which they are here expressed, or in which 
they could be expressed under existing circumstances, 
will one day become the common property of mankind : 
for nothing is opposed to them in the present day but 
empty, powerless illusions and prejudices in contra- 
diction with the true nature of man. But in consider- 
ing this subject in the first instance, I was under the 
necessity of treating it as a matter of science, of philo- 
sophy ; and in rectifying the aberrations of Religion, 
Theology, and Speculation, I was naturally obliged to 
use their expressions, and even to appear to speculate, 
or — which is the same thing — to turn theologian my- 
self, while I nevertheless only analyse speculation, i. e., 
reduce theology to anthropology. My work, as I said 
before, contains, and applies in the concrete, the prin- 
ciple of a new philosophy suited — not to the schools, 
but — to man. Yes, it contains that principle, but only 
by evolving it out of the very core of religion ; hence, 
be it said in passing, the new philosophy can no longer, 
like the old Catholic and modern Protestant scholas- 
ticism, fall into the temptation to prove its agreement 
with religion by its agreement with Christian dogmas; 
on the contrary, being evolved from the nature of re- 
ligion, it has in itself the true essence of religion, — 



16 PREFACE. 

is. in its very quality as a philosophy, a religion also, 4 
But a work which considers ideas in their genesis and 
explains and demonstrates them in strict sequence, is, 
by the very form which this purpose imposes upon it, 
unsuited to popular reading. 

Lastly, as a supplement to this work with regard to 
many apparently unvindicated positions. I refer to my 
articles in the Deutsr.hes Jahrbuch, January and Febru- 
ary. 1842, to my critiques and Charakteristiken des 
modernen After-christenthums^ in previous numbers of 
the same periodical, and to my earlier works, espe- 
cially the following : — P. Bayle. Ein Beitrag zur 
Geschichte der Philosophie und Menschheit, Ausbach, 

1838, and Philosophie und Chris tent hum , Mannheim, 

1839. - In these works,I have sketched, with a few sharp 
touches, the historical solution of Christianity, and 
have shown that Christianity has in fact long vanish- 
ed, not only from the Reason but from the Life of 
mankind, that it is nothing more than a fixed idea, in 
flagrant contradiction with our Fire and Life Assur- 
ance companies, our rail-roads and steam-carriages, 
our picture and sculpture galleries, our military and 
industrial schools, our theatres and scientific museums. 

LUDWIG FEUERBACH. 

Bruckberg, Feb. 14, 1843. 



CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTION. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. § 1. The Essential Nature of Man 19 

I. § 2. The Essence of Religion considered generally ... 32 

Part I. 

THE TRUE OR ANTHROPOLOGICAL ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 

IT. God as a Being of the Understanding . 56 

III. God as a Moral Being, or Law 70 

TV. The Mystery of the Incarnation ; or, God as Love, as a Being 

of the Heart . . 77 

V. The Mystery of the Suffering God '.88 

VI. The Mystery of the Trinity and the Mother of God ... 95 

VII. The Mystery of the Logos and Divine Image 106 

VIII. The Mystery of the Cosmogonical Principle in God . . .114 

IX. The Mystery of Mysticism, or Nature in God 122 

X. The Mystery of Providence and Creation out of Nothing . 139 

XL The Significance of the Creation in Judaism 152 

XII. The Omnipotence of Feeling, or the Mystery of Prayer . 162 

XIII. The Mystery of Faith— the Mystery of Miracle .... 170 

XIV. The Mystery of the Resurrection and of the Miraculus Con- 

ception 181 

XV. The Mystery of the Christian Christ, or the Personal God 187 

XVI. The Distinction between Christianity and Heathenism . 199 

XVII. The Significance of Voluntary Celibacy and Monachism .211 

XVHI. The Christian Heaven, or Personal Immortality . . 222 



18 CONTENTS. 

Part II. 
THE FALSE OR THEOLOGICAL ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 

CHAPTKB PAGE 

XIX. The Essential Stand-point of Religion 240 

XX. The Contradiction in the Existence of God 254 

XXI. The Contradiction in the Revelation of God 263 

XXII. The Contradiction in the Nature of God in general . . . 273 

XXIII. The Contradiction in the Speculative Doctrine of God . . 288 

XXIV. The Contradiction in the Trinity 295 

XXV. The Contradiction in the Sacraments 300 

XXVI. The Contradiction of Faith and Love 313 

XXVII. Concluding Application 340 



APPENDIX. 

SECTION 

1. The Religious Emotions purely Human 351 

2. God is Feelin<* released from Limits 353 

3. God is the highest Feeling of Self 355 

4. Distinction between the Pantheistic and Personal God . . . 356 

5. Nature without interest for Christians 361 

6. In God Man is his own Object 364 

7. Christianity the Religion of Suffering 368 

8. Mystery of the Trinity 370 

9. Creation out of nothing 376 

10. Egoism of the Israelitish Religion 378 

11. The Idea of Providence ^ 379 

12. Contradiction of Faith and Reason 387 

13. The Resurrection of Christ 391 

14. The Christian a Supermundane Being 392 

15. The Celibate and Monachism 393 

16. The Christian Heaven 405 

17. What Faith denies on Earth it affirms in Heaven 407 

18. Contradictions in the Sacraments 409 

19. Contradiction of I uith ami Love . , . . • 412 

20. Results of the I Vinci pie of Faith 422 

21. Contradiction of the God-Man 432 

22. Anthropology the Mystery of Theology 439 



THE 



ESSENCE OP CHRISTIANITY. 



CHAPTER L 
INTRODUCTION. 

§ 1. The Essential Nature of Man. 

Religion has its base in the essential difference be- 
tween man and the brute — the brutes have no religion. 
It is true that the old uncritical writers on natural 
history attributed to the elephant, among other laud- 
able qualities, the virtue of religiousness ; but the re- 
ligion of elephants belongs to the realm of fable. Cu- 
vier, one of the greatest authorities on the animal 
kingdom, assigns, on the strength of his personal ob- 
servations, no higher grade of intelligence to the ele- 
phant than to the dog. 

But what is this essential difference between man 
and the brute ? The most simple, general, and also 
the most popular answer to this question is — conscious- 
ness : — but consciousness in the strict sense ; for the 
consciousness implied in the feeling of self as an indi- 
vidual, in discrimination by the senses, in the percep- 
tion and even judgment of outward things according 
to definite sensible signs, cannot be denied to the 
brutes. Consciousness in the strictest sense is present 
only in a being to whom his species, his essential na- 
ture, is an object of thought. The brute is indeed 
conscious of himself as an individual— and he has ac- 



20 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

cordingly the feeling of self as the common centre of 
successive sensations — but not as a species : hence, he 
is without that consciousness which in its nature, as in 
its name, is akin to science. Where there is this 
higher consciousness there is a capability of science. 
Science is the cognizance of species. In practical life 
we have to do with individuals ; in science, with spe- 
cies. But only a being to whom his own species, his 
own nature, is an object of thought, can make the 
essential nature of other things or beings an object of 
thought. 

Hence the brute has only a simple, man a twofold 
life : in the brute, the inner life is one with the outer; 
man has both an inner and an outer life. The inner 
life of man is the life which has relation to his species, 
to his general, as distinguished from his individual, 
nature. Man thinks — that is, he converses with him- 
self. The brute can exercise no function which has 
relation to his species without another individual ex- 
ternal to itself; but man can perform the functions of 
thought and speech, which strictly imply such a rela- 
tion, apart from another individual. Man is himself 
at once I and thou ; he can put himself in the place of 
another, for this reason, that to him his species, his 
essential nature, and not merely his individuality, is 
an object of thought. 

Religion being identical with the distinctive cha- 
racteristic of man, is then identical with self-conscious- 
ness — with the consciousness which man has of his 
nature. But religion, expressed generally, is con- 
sciousness of the infinite ; thus it is and can be nothing 
else than the consciousness which man has of his own 
— not finite and limited, but infinite nature. A really 
finite being has not even the faintest adumbration, 
still less consciousness, of an infinite being, for the 
limit of the nature is also the limit of the conscious- 
The consciousness of the caterpillar, whose life 
is confined to a particular species of plant, does not 
extend itself beyond this narrow domain. It does, 



THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF MAN. 21 

indeed, discriminate between this plant and other 
plants, but more it knows not. A consciousness so 
limited, but on account of that very limitation so in- 
fallible, we do not call consciousness, but instinct. 
Consciousness, in the strict or proper sense, is iden- 
tical with consciousness of the infinite ; a limited con- 
sciousness is no consciousness ; consciousness is essen- 
tially infinite in its nature.* The consciousness of 
the infinite is nothing else than the consciousness of 
the infinity of the consciousness : or, in the conscious- 
ness of the infinite, the conscious subject has for his 
object the infinity of his own nature. 

What, then, is the nature of man, of which he is 
conscious, or what constitutes the specific distinction, 
the proper humanity of man ?f Reason, Will, Affection. 
To a complete man belong the power of thought, the 
power of will, the power of affection. The power of 
thought is the light of the intellect, the power of will 
is energy of character, the power of affection is love. 
Reason, love, force of will, are perfections — the per- 
fections of -the human being- — nay, more, they are ab- 
solute perfections of being. To will, to love, to think, 
are the highest powers, are the absolute nature of man 
as man, and the basis of his existence. Man exists to 
think, to love, to will. Now that which is the end, 
the ultimate aim, is also the true basis and principle 
of a being. But what is the end of reason ? Reason. 
Of love ? Love. Of will ? Freedom of the will. We 
think for the sake of thinking ; love for the sake of 

* Objectum intellectus esse iUmiitatum. sive omne verum ac, ut lo- 
quuntur, omne ens ut ens, ex eo constat, quod ad nullum non genus 
rerum extenditur, nullumque est, cujus cognoscendi capax non sit, licet 
ob varia obstacula multa sint, quse re ipsa, non norit. — Gassendi (Opp. 
Omn. Phys). 

f The obtuse materialist says : "Man is distinguished from the brute 
only by consciousness — he is an animal with consciousness superadded ;" 
not reflecting, that in a being which awakes to consciousness, there takes 
place a qualitative change, a differentiation of the entire nature. For the 
rest, our words are by no means intended to depreciate the nature of the 
lower animals. This is not the place to enter further into that question. 



22 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

loving ; will for the sake of willing — i. e. y that we 
may be free. True existence is thinking, loving, 
willing existence. That alone is true, perfect, divine, 
which exists for its own sake. But such is love, such 
is reason, such is will. The divine trinity in man, 
above the individual man, is the unity of reason, love, 
will. Reason, Will, Love, are not powers which man 
possesses, for he is nothing without them, he is what 
he is only by them ; they are the constituent elements 
of his nature, which he neither has nor makes, the 
animating, determining, governing powers — divine, 
absolute powers — to which he can oppose no re- 
sistance.* 

How can the feeling man resist feeling, the loving 
one love, the rational one reason? Who has not ex- 
perienced the overwhelming power of melody ? And 
what else is the power of melody but the power of 
feeling ? Music is the language of feeling ; melody is 
audible feeling — feeling communicating itself. Who 
has not experienced the power of love, or at least 
heard of it? Which is the stronger — love or the in- 
dividual man? Is it man that possesses love, or is it 
not much rather love that possesses man ? When love 
impels a man to suffer death even joyfully for the be- 
loved one, is this death-conquering power his own in- 
dividual power, or is it not rather the power of love? 
And who that ever truly thought has not experienced 
that quiet, subtle power — the power of thought? 
When thou sinkest into deep reflection, forgetting thy- 
self and what is around thee, dost thou govern reason, 
or is it not reason which governs and absorbs thee? 
Scientific enthusiasm — is it not the most glorious 
triumph of intellect over thee ? The desire of know- 
ledge — is it not a simply irresistible, and all-conquer- 
ing power? And when thou suppressest a passion, 
renouncest a habit, in short, achievest a victory over 
thyself, is this victorious power thy own personal 

* 'Toute opinion c^t assez forte pour sc fuirc exposer au prix de la 
vie." — Montaigne. 



THE ESSENTIAL-NATURE OF MAN. 23 

power, or is it not rather the energy of will, the force 
of morality, which seizes the mastery of thee, and fills 
thee with indignation against thyself and thy indi- 
vidual weaknesses ? 

Man is nothing without an object. The great models 
of humanity, such men as reveal to us what man is 
capable of, have attested the truth of this proposition 
by their lives. They had only one dominant passion 
— the realization of the aim which was the essential 
object of their activity. But the object to which a 
subject essentially, necessarily relates, is nothing else 
than this subject's own, but objective, nature. If it be 
an object common to several individuals of the same 
species, but under various conditions, it is still, at least 
as to the form under which it presents itself to each 
of them according to their respective modifications, 
their own, but objective, nature. 

Thus the Sun is the common object of the planets, 
but it is an object to Mercury, to Venus, to Saturn, to 
Uranus, under other conditions than to the Earth. 
Each planet has its own sun. The Sun which lights 
and warms Uranus has no physical (only an astro- 
nomical, scientific) existence for the earth ; and not 
only does the Sun appear different, but it really is 
another sun on Uranus than on the Earth. The re- 
lation of the Sun to the Earth is therefore at the same 
time a relation of the Earth to itself, or to its own 
nature, for the measure of the size and of the intensity 
of light which the Sun possesses as the object of the 
Earth, is the measure of the distance, which determines 
the peculiar nature of the Earth. Hence each planet 
has in its sun the mirror of its own nature. 

In the object which he contemplates, therefore, man 
becomes acquainted with himself; consciousness of 
the objective is the self-consciousness of man. We 
know the man by the object, by his conception of 
what is external to himself; in it his nature becomes 
evident ; this object is his manifested nature, his true 
objective ego. And this is true not merely of spiritual, 



24 THE ESSENCE OF "CHKISTIANITY. 

but also of sensuous objects. Even the objects which 
are the most remote from man, because they are objects 
to him, and to the extent to which they are so, are 
revelations of human nature. Even the moon, the sun, 
the stars, call to man TvZ6<, aea-otov. That he sees them, 
and so sees them, is an evidence of his own nature. 
The animal is sensible only of the beam which imme- 
diately effects life ; while man perceives the ray, to 
him physically indifferent, of the remotest star. Man 
alone has purely intellectual, disinterested joys and 
passions ; the eye of man alone keeps theoretic festi- 
vals. The eye which looks into the starry heavens, 
which gazes at that light, alike useless and harmless, 
having nothing in common with the earth and its ne- 
cessities — this eye sees in that light its own nature, 
its own origin. The eye is heavenly in its nature. 
Hence man elevates himself above the earth only with 
the eye ; hence theory begins with the contemplation 
of the heavens. The first philosophers were astro- 
nomers. It is the heavens that admonish man of his 
destination, and remind him that he is destined not 
merely to action, but also to contemplation. 

The absolute to man is his own nature. The power 
of the object over him is therefore the power of his 
own nature. Thus the power of the object of feeling 
is the power of feeling itself; the power of the object 
of the intellect is the power of the intellect itself; the 
power of the object of the will is the power of the will 
itself. The man who is affected by musical sounds, is 
governed by feeling ; by the feeling, that is, which 
finds its corresponding element in musical sounds. 
But it is not melody as such, it is only melody preg- 
nant with meaning and emotion, which has power over 
feeling. Feeling is only acted on by that which con- 
veys feeling, L e. t by itself, its own nature. Thus also 
the will ; thus, and infinitely more, the intellect. What- 
ever kind of object, therefore, we are at any time con- 
scious of, we are always at the same time conscious of 
our own nature ; we can affirm nothing without affirm- 



THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF MAN. 25 

ing ourselves. And since to will, to feel, to think, are 
perfections, essences, realities, it is impossible that in- 
tellect, feeling, and will should feel or perceive them- 
selves as limited, finite powers, i. e., as worthless, as 
nothing. For finiteness and nothingness are identical ; 
finiteness is only a euphemism for nothingness. Finite- 
ness is the metaphysical, the theoretical- — nothingness 
the pathological, practical expression. What is finite 
to the understanding is nothing to the heart. But it 
is impossible that we should be conscious of will, feel- 
ing, and intellect, as finite powers, because every per- 
fect existence, every original power and essence, is 
the immediate verification and affirmation of itself. It 
is impossible to love, will, or think, without perceiving 
these activities to be perfections — impossible to feel 
that one is a loving, willing, thinking being, without 
experiencing an infinite joy therein. Consciousness 
consists in a being becoming objective to itself ; hence 
it is nothing apart, nothing distinct from the being 
which is conscious of itself. How could it otherwise 
become conscious of itself? It is therefore impossible 
to be conscious of a perfection as an imperfection, im- 
possible to feel feeling limited, to think thought limited. 
Consciousness is self-verification, self-affirmation, 
self-love, joy in one's own perfection. Consciousness 
is the characteristic mark of a perfect nature ; it exists 
only in a self-sufficing, complete being. Even human 
vanity attests this truth. A man looks in the glass; 
he has complacency in his appearance. This compla- 
cency is a necessary, involuntary consequence of the 
completeness, the beauty of his form. A beautiful 
form is satisfied in itself ; it has necessarily joy in it- 
self — in self-contemplation. This complacency becomes 
vanity only when a man piques himself on his form as 
being his individual form, not when he admires it as 
a specimen of human beauty in general. It is fitting 
that he should admire it thus ; he can conceive no form 
more beautiful, more sublime than the human.* Assu- 

* Homini homine nihil pulchrius. (Cic. de Nat. D. 1. i.) And this is 
B 



26 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

redly every being loves itself, its existence — and fitly 
so. To exist is a good. Quidquid essentia dignum est, 
scientia dignum est. Everything that exists has value, 
is a being of distinction — at least this is true of the 
species : hence it asserts, maintains itself. But the 
highest form of self-assertion, the form which is itself 
a superiority, a perfection, a bliss, a good, is con- 
sciousness. 

Every limitation of the reason, or in general of the 
nature of man, rests on a delusion, an error. It is 
true that the human being, as an individual, can and 
must — herein consists his distinction from the brute — 
feel and recognise himself to be limited ; but he can 
become conscious of his limits, his finiteness, only be- 
cause the perfection, the infinitude of his species is 
perceived by him, whether as an object of feeling, of 
conscience, or of the thinking consciousness. If he 
makes his own limitations the limitations of the 
species, this arises from the mistake that he identifies 
himself immediately with the species — a mistake which 
is intimately connected with the individual's love of 
ease, sloth, vanity, and egotism. For a limitation which 
I know to be merely mine humiliates, shames, and per- 
turbs me. Hence to free myself* from this feeling of 
shame, from this state of dissatisfaction, I convert the 
limits of my individuality into the limits of human na- 
ture in general. What is incomprehensible to me is 
incomprehensible to others ; why should I trouble my- 
self further? it is no fault of mine; my understanding 
is not to blame, but the understanding of the nice. But 
it is a ludicrous and even culpable error to define as 
finite and limited what constitutes the essence of man, 
the nature of his species, which is the absolute nature 
of the individual. Every being is sufficient to itself. 
No being can deny itself, /. e. t its own nature ; no be- 
no sign of limitation, for he regards other being! as beautiful besi Lea him- 
self: he delights id the beautiful forma of animals, ha the beautiful forms 
of plants, in the beauty of nature in general But only the absolute, the 
perfect form, can delight without envy in the forms of other beinge. 



THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF MAN. 27 

ing is a limited one to itself. Rather, every being is 
in and by itself infinite — has its God, its highest con- 
ceivable being, in itself. Every limit of a being is 
cognisable only by another being out of and above 
him. The life of the ephemera is extraordinarily 
short in comparison with that of longer lived crea- 
tures ; but nevertheless, for the ephemera this short life 
is as long as a life of years to others. The leaf on 
which the caterpillar lives is for it a world, an infinite 
space. 

That which makes a being what it is — is its talent, its 
power, its wealth, its adornment. How can it possibly 
hold its existence non-existence, its wealth poverty, its 
talent incapacity ? If the plants had eyes, taste and 
judgment, each plant would declare its own flower the 
most beautiful ; for its comprehension, its taste, would 
reach no farther than its natural power of production. 
What the productive power of its nature has brought 
forth as the highest, that must also its taste, its judg- 
ment, recognise and affirm as the highest. What the 
nature affirms, the understanding, the taste, the judg- 
ment, cannot deny ; otherwise the understanding, the 
judgment, would no longer be the understanding and 
judgment of this particular being, but of some other. 
The measure of the nature is also the measure of the 
understanding. If the nature is limited, so also is the 
feeling, so also is the understanding. But to a limited 
being its limited understanding is not felt to be a 
limitation ; on the contrary, it is perfectly happy and 
contented with this understanding ; it regards it, 
praises and values it, as a glorious, divine power ; and 
the limited understanding, on its part, values the limit- 
ed nature whose understanding it is. Each is exactly 
adapted to the other ; how should they be at issue 
with each other? A being's understanding is its 
sphere of vision. As far as thou seest, so far extends 
thy nature ; and conversely. The eye of the brute 
reaches no farther than its needs, and its nature no 
farther than its needs. And so far as thy nature reaches, 
b2 



28 * THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

so far reaches thy unlimited self-consciousness, so far 
art thou God. The discrepancy between the under- 
standing and the nature, between the power of con- 
ception and the power of production in the human con- 
sciousness, on the one hand is merely individual signi- 
ficance and has not a universal application ; and, on 
the other hand, it is only apparent. He who having 
written a bad poem knows it to be bad, is in his intel- 
ligence, and therefore in his nature, not so limited as 
he who, having written a bad poem, admires it and 
thinks it good. 

It follows, that if thou thinkest the infinite, thou per- 
ceivest and affirmest the infinitude of the power of 
thought ; if thou feelest the infinite, thou feelest and 
affirmest the infinitude of the power to feeling. The 
object of the intellect is intellect objective to itself; the 
object of feeling is feeling objective to itself. If thou 
hast no sensibility, no feeling for music, thou perceivest 
in the finest music nothing more than in the wind that 
whistles by thy ear, or than in the brook which rushes 
past thy feet. What then is it which acts on thee when 
thou art affected by melody ? What does thou per- 
ceive in it ? What else than the voice of thy own heart ? 
Feeling speaks only to feeling ; feeling is comprehen- 
sible only by feeling, that is, by itself — for this reason, 
that the object of feeling is nothing else than feeling. 
Music is a monologue of emotion. But the dialogue of 
philosophy also is in truth only a monologue of the in- 
tellect ; thought speaks only to thought. The splen- 
dours of the crystal charm the sense ; but the intel- 
lect is interested only in the laws of crystallization. 
The intellectual only is the object of the intellect. 

All therefore which, in the point of view of meta- 
physical, transcendental speculation and religion, lias 
the significance only of the secondary, the subjective, 
the medium, the organ, — has in truth the significance 

* " The understanding La percipient only of understanding, and 
■what proeeedfl theaoe." — Reimaama (Wahrh. far NaturL Religion, iv. 

Abth, §8.) 



THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF MAN. 29 

of the primary, of the essence, of the object itself. If, 
for example, feeling is the essential organ of religion, 
the nature of God is nothing else than an exprdfeion 
of the nature of feeling. The true but latent sense of 
the phrase, " Feeling is the organ of the divine," is, 
feeling is the noblest, the most excellent, i. e., the 
divine, in man. How couldst thou perceive the divine 
by feeling, if feeling were not itself divine in its na- 
ture? The divine assuredly is known only by means 
of the divine — God is known only by himself. The 
divine nature which is discerned by feeling, is in truth 
nothing else than feeling enraptured, in ecstasy with 
itself — feeling intoxicated with joy, blissful in its own 
plenitude. 

It is already clear from this that where feeling is 
held to be the organ of the infinite, the subjective 
essence of religion, — the external data of religion lose 
their objective value. And thus, since feeling has 
been held the cardinal principle in religion, the doc- 
trines of Christianity, formerly so sacred, have lost 
their importance. If from this point of view some 
value is still conceded to Christian ideas, it is a value 
springing entirely from the relation they bear to feel- 
ing ; if another object would exicte the same emotions, 
it would be just as welcome. But the object of re- 
ligious feeling is become a matter of indifference, only 
because when once feeling has been pronounced to be 
the subjective essence of religion, it in fact is also the 
objective essence of religion, though it may not be de- 
clared, at least directly, to be such. I say directly ; 
for indirectly this is certainly admitted, when it is 
declared that feeling, as such, is religious, and thus 
the distinction between specifically religious and ir- 
religious, or at least non-religious, feelings, is abo- 
lished, — a necessary consequence of the point of view 
in which feeling only is regarded as the organ of the 
divine. For on what other ground than that of its 
essence, its nature, dost thou hold feeling to be the 
organ of the infinite, the divine being ? And is not 



30 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the nature of feeling in general, also tile nature of 
every special feeling, be its object what it may ? What, 
theri^miakes this feeling religious? A given object? 
Not at all ; for this object is itself a religious one only 
when it is not an object of the cold understanding or 
memory, but of feeling. What then ? The nature of 
feeling — a nature of which every special feeling, with- 
out distinction of objects, partakes. Thus, feeling is 
pronounced to be religious, simply because it is feeling; 
the ground of its religiousness is its own nature — lies 
in itself. But is not feeling thereby declared to be it- 
self the absolute, the divine ? If feeling in itself is 
good, religious, i. e., holv, divine, has not feeling its 
God in itself? 

But if, notwithstanding, thou wilt posit an object of 
feeling, but at the same time seekest to express thy 
feeling truly, without introducing by thy reflection 
any foreign element, what remains to thee but to dis- 
tinguish between thy individual feeling and the general 
nature of feeling ; — to separate the universal in feeling 
from the disturbing, adulterating influences with which 
feeling is bound up in thee, under thy individual con- 
ditions ? Hence what thou canst alone contemplate, 
declare to be the infinite, and define as its essence, is 
merely the nature of feeling. Thou hast thus no other 
definition of God than this ; God is pure, unlimited, 
free Feeling. Every other God, whom thou supposest, 
is a God thrust upon thy feeling from without. Feeling 
is atheistic in the sense of the orthodox belief, which 
attaches religion to an external object ; it denies an 
objective God — it is itself God. In this point of view, 
only the negation of feeling is the negation of God. 
Thou art simply too cowardly or too narrow to con- 
fess in words what thy feeling tacitly affirms. Fettered 
by outward considerations, Mill in bondage to vulgar 
empiricism, incapable of comprehending the spiritual 
grandeur of feeling, thou arl terrified before the reli- 
gious atheism of thy heart. By this fear thou de- 
stroyest the unity of thy feeling with itself, in iinagin- 



THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF MAN. 31 

ing to thyself an objective being distinct from thy 
feeling, and thus necessarily sinking back into the 
old questions and doubts — is there a God or not? — 
questions and doubts which vanish, nay, are impos- 
sible, where feeling is defined as the essence of re- 
ligion. Feeling is thy own inward power, but at the 
same time a power distinct from thee, and independent 
of thee ; it is in thee, above thee : it is itself that which 
constitutes the objective in thee — thy own being which 
impresses thee as another being ; in short, thy God. 
How wilt thou then distinguish from this objective 
being within thee another objective being ? how wilt 
thou get beyond thy feeling ? 

But feeling has here been adduced only as an example. 
It is the same with every other power, faculty, poten- 
tiality, reality, activity — the name is indifferent — 
which is defined as the essential organ of any object. 
Whatever is a subjective expression of a nature is 
simultaneously also its objective expression. Man 
cannot get beyond his true nature. He may indeed 
by means of the imagination conceive individuals of 
another so-called higher kind, but he can never get 
loose from his species, his nature ; the conditions of 
being, the positive final predicates which he gives to 
these other individuals, are always determinations or 
qualities drawn from his own nature — qualities in 
which he in truth only images and projects himself. 
There may certainly be thinking beings besides men 
on the other planets of our solar system. But by the 
supposition of such beings we do not change our stand- 
ing point — we extend our conceptions quantitatively r , 
not qualitatively. For as surely as on the other planets 
there are the same laws of motion, so surely are there 
the same laws of perception and thought as here. In 
fact, we people the other planets, not that we may place 
there different beings from ourselves, but more beings 
of our own or of a similar nature. # 

* Verisimile est, non minus quam geometrise, etiam musicas oblecta- 
tionem ad plures quam ad nos pertinere. Positis enim aliis tends atque 



32 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 



§ 2. The Essence of Religion considered generally. 



What we have hitherto been maintaining generally, 
even with regard to sensational impressions, of the 
relation between subject and object, applies especially 
to the relation between the subject and the religious 
object. 

In the perceptions of the senses consciousness of the 
object is distinguishable from consciousness of self; 
but in religion, consciousness of the object and self- 
consciousness coincide. The object of the senses is 
out of man, the religious object is within him, and 
therefore as little forsakes him as his self-consciousness 
or his conscience ; it is the intimate, the closest object. 
u God, ' says Augustine, for example, " is nearer, more 
related to us, and therefore more easily known by us, 
than sensible, corporeal things."* The object of the 
senses is in itself indifferent — independent of the dis- 
position or of the judgment ; but the object of religion 
is a selected object ; the most excellent, the first, the 
supreme being ; it essentially pre-supposes a critical 
judgment, a discrimination between the divine and the 
non-divine, between that which is worthy of adoration 
and that which is not worthy. f And here may be 
applied, without any limitation, the proposition : the 
object of any subject is nothing else than the subject's 
own nature taken objectively. Such as are a man's 
thoughts and dispositions, such is his God; so much 
worth as a man has, so much and no more has his God. 

aiiimalibus ratione et auditu pollentibu.s, cur tantum his oostris contfgis- 
[ua sola ex Bono percipi p« t? — Christ Hugemus. 
. 1. i.) 

* Dc Genesi ad litteram, 1. v. c. 16, 

f Unusquisquc vestrum non cogitat, prius se debero Deum 7ivsse, quam 
colere. — M. Minucii Felicis Octavianus, c. 2\. 



THE ESSENCE OF EELIGION. 33 

Consciousness of God is self-consciousness, knowledge 
of God is self-knowledge. By his God thou knowest 
the man, and by the man his God ; the two are iden- 
tical. Whatever is God to a man, that is his heart 
and soul ; and conversely, God is the manifested in- 
ward nature, the expressed self of a man, — religion 
the solemn unveiling of a man's hidden treasures the 
revelation of his intimate thoughts, the open confession 
of his love-secrets. 

But when religion — consciousness of God — is desig- 
nated as the self-consciousness of man, this is not to be 
understood as affirming that the religious man is di- 
rectly aware of this identity ; for, on the contrary, 
ignorance of it is fundamental to the peculiar nature of 
religion. To preclude this misconception, it is better 
to say. religion is man's earliest and also indirect form 
of self-knowledge. Hence, religion everywhere pre- 
cedes philosophy, as in the history of the race, so also 
in that of the individual. Man first of all sees his 
nature as if out of himself, before he finds it in himself. 
His own nature is in the first instance contemplated 
by him as that of another being. Religion is the child- 
like condition of humanity ; but the child sees his na- 
ture — man- — out of himself ; in childhood a man is an 
object to himself, under the form of another man. 
Hence the historical progress of religion consists in 
this : that what by an earlier religion was regarded as 
objective, is now recognised as subjective ; that is, 
what was formerly contemplated and worshipped as 
God is now perceived to be something human. What 
was at first religion becomes at a later period idolatry; 
man is seen to have adored his own nature. Man has 
given objectivity to himself, but has not recognised 
the object as his own nature : a later religion takes 
this forward step ; every advance in religion is there- 
fore a deeper self-knowledge. But every particular 
religion, while it pronounces its predecessors idola- 
trous, excepts itself — and necessarily so, otherwise it 
would no longer be religion — from the fate, the com- 
b 3 



34 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

mon nature of all religions : it imputes only to other 
religions what is the fault, if fault it be, of religion in 
general. Because it has a different object, a different 
tenour, because it has transcended the ideas of pre- 
ceding religions, it erroneously supposes itself exalted 
above the necessary eternal laws which constitute the 
essence of religion — it fancies its object, its ideas, to 
be superhuman. But the essence of religion, thus 
hidden from the religious, is evident to the thinker, by 
whom religion is viewed objectively, which it cannot 
be by its votaries. And it is our task to show that 
the antithesis of divine and human is altogether illu- 
sory, that it is nothing else than the antithesis between 
the human nature in general, and the human individual: 
that, consequently, the object and contents of the 
Christian religion are altogether human. 

Religion, at least the Chiistian, is the relation of 
man to himself, or more correctly to his own nature 
i. e., his subjective nature);* but a relation to it, 
viewed as a nature apart from his own. The divine 
being is nothing else than the human being, or, rather 
the human nature purified, freed from the limits of the 
individual man, made — objective — i. e., contemplated 
and revered as another, a distinct being. All the attri- 
butes of the divine nature are, therefore, attributes of 
the human nature. \ 

In relation to the attributes, the predicates, of the 
Divine Being, this is admitted without hesitation, but 
by no means in relation to the subject of these predi- 
cates. The negation of the subject is held to be irre- 

* The meaning of this parenthetic limitation will he clear in the 
sequel. 

f Lea perfections de Dion Bent cellea de nos ames, mais il les poaaede 
sans homes — il y a en nova qnelque pttiaaanoe, qnelqne connaissance, 
quelqne bonte, maia ellea Bont toutee entiera en Dieu. — Leibnitz, (Theod. 
Preface.) Nihil in anima ease putemua eximium, qnod oonetiani divinsa 
naturae proprinm Bit — Quidquid a Deo aliennm extra definitionem anima*. 
— S, Gregoriua N o, nt videtnr, diaciplinanim omninm pnl- 

cherrima et maxima Be [psora oosse : si quia enini sc ip.snm norit, Deum 
oognoecet — Clemnfl Alex. (Pa&d. 1. iii. c. 1.) 



THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 35 

ligion, nay, atheism; though not so the negation of 
the predicates. But that which has no predicates or 
qualities, has no effect upon me; that which has no 
effect upon me, has no existence for me. To deny all 
the qualities of a being is equivalent to denying the 
being himself. A being without qualities is one which 
cannot become an object to the mind ; and such a being 
is virtually non-existent. Where man deprives God 
of all qualities, God is no longer anything more to 
him than a negative being. To the truly religious 
man, God is not a being without qualities, because to 
him he is a positive, real being. The theory that God 
cannot be defined, and consequently cannot be known 
by man, is therefore the offspring of recent times, a 
product of modern unbelief. 

As reason is and can be pronounced finite only 
where man regards sensual enjoyment, or religious 
emotion, or aesthetic contemplation, or moral senti- 
ment, as the absolute, the true ; so the proposition that 
God is unknowable or undefinable can only be enun- 
ciated and become fixed as a dogma, where this object 
has no longer any interest for the intellect ; where the 
real, the positive, alone has any hold on man, where 
the real alone has for him the significance of the essen- 
tial, of the absolute, divine object, but where at the 
same time, in contradiction with this purely worldly 
tendency, there yet exist some old remains of re- 
ligiousness. On the ground that God is unknowable, 
man excuses himself to what is yet remaining of his 
religious conscience for his forgetfulness of God, his 
absorption in the world : he denies God practically 
by his conduct,- — the world has possession of all his 
thoughts and inclinations, — but he does not deny him 
theoretically, he does not attack his existence ; he lets 
that rest. But this existence does not affect or in- 
commode him ; it is a merely negative existence, an 
existence without existence, a self-contradictory exis- 
tence, — a state of being, which, as to its effects, is not 
distinguishable from non-being. The denial of de- 



36 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

terminate, positive predicates concerning the divine 
nature, is nothing else than a denial of religion, with, 
however, an appearance of religion in its favour, so 
that it is not recognised as a denial ; it is simply a 
subtle, disguised atheism. The alleged religious horror 
of limiting God by positive predicates, is only the 
irreligious wish to know nothing more of God, to banish 
God from the mind. Pread of limitation is dread of 
existence. All real existence, i. e., all existence which 
is truly such, is qualitative, determinate existence. He 
who earnestly believes in the Divine existence, is not 
shocked at the attributing even of gross sensuous qual- 
ities to God. He who dreads an existence that may 
give offence, who shrinks from the grossness of a posi- 
tive predicate, may as well renounce existence alto- 
gether. A God who is injured by determinate quali- 
ties has not the courage and the strength to exist. 
Qualities are the fire, the vital breath, the oxygen, the 
salt of existence. An existence in general, an existence 
without qualities, is an insipidity, an absurdity. But 
there can be no more in God, than is supplied by re- 
ligion. Only where man loses his taste for religion, 
and thus religion itself becomes insipid, does the exis- 
tence of God become an insipid existence — an existence 
without qualities. 

There is, however, a still milder way of denying the 
Divine predicates than the direct one just described. 
It is admitted that the predicates of the divine nature 
are finite, and, more particularly, human qualities, but 
their rejection is rejected ; they are even taken under 
protection, because it is necessary to man to have a 
definite conception of God, and since lie is man. he can 
form no other than a human conception of him. In 
relation to God. it is said, these predicates are certainly 
without any objective validity ; but to me, if he is to 
exigt for me. he cannot appear otherwise than as he 
does appear to inc. namely, as a being with attributes 
analogous to the human. But this flistiijction between 
what Grbd is in himself, and What he is for me, destroys 



THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 37 

the peace of religion, and is besides in itself an un- 
founded and untenable distinction. I cannot know 
whether God is something else in himself or for him- 
self, than he is for me ; what he is to me, is to me all 
that he is. For me, there lies in these predicates un- 
der which he exists for me, what he is in himself, his 
very nature ; he is for me what he can alone ever be 
for me. The religious man finds perfect satisfaction 
in that which God is in relation to himself ; of any 
other relation he knows nothing, for God is to him 
what he can alone be to man. In the distinction above 
stated, man takes a point of view above himself, i. e., 
above his nature, the absolute measure of his being ; 
but this transcendentalism is only an illusion ; for I 
can make the distinction between the object as it is in 
itself, and the object as it is for me, only where an 
object can really appear otherwise to me, not where 
it appears to me such as the absolute measure of my 
nature determines it to appear— such as it must appear 
to me. It is true that I may have a merely subjective 
conception, i. c, one which does not arise out of the 
general constitution of my species ; but if my conception 
is determined by the constitution of my species, the 
distinction between what an object is in itself, and what 
it is for me ceases ; for this conception is itself an abso- 
lute one. The measure of the species is the absolute 
measure, law, and criterion of man. And, indeed, 
religion has the conviction that its conceptions, its 
predicates of God, are such as every man ought to have, 
and must have, if he would have the true ones — that 
they are the conceptions necessary to human nature ; 
nay, further, that they are objectively true, represent- 
ing God as he is. 

To every religion the gods of other religions are only 
notions concerning God, but its own conception of 
God is to it God himself, the true God — God such as 
he is in himself. Religion is satisfied only with a 
complete Deity, a God without reservation ; it -will 
not have a mere phantasm of God; it demands God 






38 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

himself. Religion gives up its own existence when it 
gives up the nature of God ; it is no longer a truth, 
when it renounces the possession of the true God. 
Scepticism is the arch-enemy of religion ; but the dis- 
tinction between object and conception — between God 
as he is in himself, and God as he is for me, is a scep- 
tical distinction, and therefore an irreligious one. 

That which is to man the self-existent, the highest 
being, to which he can conceive nothing higher — that 
is to him the Divine being. How then should he in- 
quire concerning this being, what He is in himself? 
If God were an object to the bird, he would be a winged 
being : the bird knows nothing higher, nothing more 
blissful, than the winged condition. How ludicrous 
would it be if this bird pronounced : to me God appears 
as a bird, but what he is in himself I know not. To 
the bird the highest nature is the bird-nature ; take 
from him the conception of this, and you take from 
him the conception of the highest being. How, then, 
could he ask whether God in himself were winged? 
To ask whether God is in himself what he is for me, 
is to ask whether God is God, is to lift oneself above 
one's God, to rise up against him. 

Wherever, therefore, this idea, that the religious 
predicates are only anthropomorphisms, has taken 
possession of a man, there has doubt, has unbelief ob- 
tained the mastery of faith. And it is only the incon- 
sequence of faint-heartedness and intellectual imbeci- 
lity which does not proceed from this idea to the formal 
negation of the predicates, and from thence to the nc- 
gation of the subject to which they relate. If thou 
doubtest the objective truth of the predicates, thou 
must also doubt the objective truth of the subject whose 
predicates they are. If thy predicates are anthro- 
pomorphisms, the subject of them is an anthropomor- 
phism too. If love, goodness, personality. &C., are 
human attributes, BO also is the subject which thou 
pre-supposest, the existdhce of God, the belief that 
there is a God, an anthropomorphism — a pre-supposi- 



THE ESSENCE OP RELIGION. 39 

tion purely human. Whence knowest thou that the 
belief in a God at all is not a limitation of man's mode 
of conception? Higher beings — and thou supposest 
such — are perhaps so blest in themselves, so at unity 
with themselves, that they are not hung in suspense 
between themselves and a yet higher being. To know 
God and not oneself to be God, to know blessedness, 
and not oneself to enjoy it, is a state of disunity, of 
unhappiness. Higher beings know nothing of this 
unhappiness ; they have no conception of that which 
they are not. 

Thou believest in love as a divine attribute because 
thou thyself lovest ; thou believest that God is a wise, 
benevolent being, because thou knowcst nothing better 
in thyself than benevolence and wisdom ; and thou 
believest that God exists, that therefore he is a subject 
— whatever exists is a subject, whether it be defined as 
substance, person, essence, or otherwise — because thou 
thyself existest, art thyself a subject. Thou knowest 
no higher human good, than to love, than to be good 
and wise ; and even so thou knowest no higher happi- 
ness than to exist, to be a subject ; for the conscious- 
ness of all reality, of all bliss, is for thee bound up in 
the consciousness of being a subject, of existing. God 
is an existence, a subject to thee, for the same reason 
that he is to thee a wise, a blessed, a personal being. 
"The distinction between the divine predicates and the 
divine subject is only this, that to thee the subject, the 
existence, does not appear an anthropomorphism, be- 
cause the conception of it is necessarily involved in 
thy own existence as a subject, whereas the predicates 
do appear anthropomorphisms, because their necessity 
- — the necessity that God should be conscious, wise, 
good, &c. — is not an immediate necessity, identical 
with the being of man, but is evolved by his self-con- 
sciousness, by the activity of his thought. I am a subject, 
I exist, whether I be wise or unwise, good or bad. To 
exist is to man the first datum ; it constitutes the very 
idea of the subject ; it is presupposed by the predicates. 



40 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Hence, man relinquishes the predicates, but the exis- 
tence of God is to him a settled, irrefragable, abso- 
lutely certain, objective truth. But. nevertheless, this 
distinction is merely an apparent one. The necessity 
of the subject lies only in the necessity of the predicate. 
Thou art a subject only in so far as thou art a human 
subject : the certainty and reality of thy existence lie 
only in the certainty and reality of thy human attri- 
butes. What the subject is. lies only in the predicate : 
the predicate is the truth of the subject— the subject 
only the personified, existing predicate, the predicate 
conceived as existing. Subject and predicate are dis- 
tinguished only as existence and essence. The nega- 
tion of the predicates is therefore the negation of the 
subject. What remains of the human subject when 
abstracted from the human attributes ? Even in the 
language of common life the divine predicates — Pro- 
vidence. Omniscience. Omnipotence— are put for the 
divine subject. 

The certainty of the existence of God. of which it 
has been said that it is as certain, nay. more certain 
to man than his own existence, depends only on the 
certainty of the qualities of God — it is in itself no 
immediate certainty. To the Christian the existence 
of the Christian God only is a certainty : to the heathen 
that of the heathen God only. The heathen did not 
doubt the existence of Jupiter, because he took no 
offence at the nature of Jupiter, because he could con- 
ceive of God under no other qualities, because to him 
these qualities were a certainty, a divine reality. The 
reality of the predicate is the sole guarantee of exis- 
tence. 

Whatever man conceives to be true, he immediately 
conceives to be real i that is. to have an objective 
existence), because, originally, only the real is true to 
him — true in opposition to what is merely conceived,, 
dreamed, imagined. The idea of being, of existence, 
is the original idea of truth ; or. originally, man makes 
truth dependent on existence, subsequently, existence 



THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 41 

dependent on truth. Now God is the nature of man 
regarded as absolute truth, — the truth of man ; but 
God, or, what is the same thing, religion, is as various 
as are the conditions under which man conceives this 
his nature, regards it as the highest being. These 
conditions, then, under which man conceives God, are 
to him the truth, and for that reason they are also the 
highest existence, or rather they are existence itself; 
for only the emphatic, the highest existence, is exist- 
ence, and deserves this name. Therefore, God is an 
existent, real being, on the very same ground that he 
is a particular, definite being ; for the qualities of 
God are nothing else than the essential qualities of 
man himself, and a particular man is what he is, has 
his existence, his reality, only in his particular con- 
ditions. Take away from the Greek the quality of 
being Greek, and you take away his existence. On 
this ground, it is true that for a definite positive reli- 
gion — that is, relatively — the certainty of the exist- 
ence of God is immediate ; for just as involuntarily, as 
necessarily, as the Greek was a Greek, so necessarily 
were his gods Greek beings, so necessarily were they 
real, existent beings. Religion is that conception of 
the nature of the world and of man which is essential 
to, i. e., identical with, a man's nature. But man does 
not stand above this his necessary conception ; on the 
contrary, it stands above him; it animates, determines, 
governs him. The necessity of a proof, of a middle 
term to unite qualities with existence, the possibility 
of a doubt, is abolished. Only that which is apart 
from my own being is capable of being doubted by me. 
How then can I doubt of God, who is my being? To 
doubt of God is to doubt of myself. Only when God 
is thought of abstractly, when his predicates are 
the result of philosophic abstraction, arises the dis- 
tinction or separation between subject and predicate, 
existence and nature — arises the fiction that the exist- 
ence or the subject is something else than the predi- 
cate, something immediate, indubitable, in distinction 



42 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

from the predicate, which is held to be doubtful. But 
this is only a fiction. A God who has abstract predi- 
cates has also an abstract existence. Existence, being, 
varies with varying qualities. 

The identity of the subject and predicate is clearly 
evidenced by the progressive development of religion, 
which is identical with the progressive development 
of human culture. So long as man is in a mere state 
of nature, so long is his god a mere nature-god — a per- 
sonification of some natural force. Where man inha- 
bits houses, he also encloses his gods in temples. The 
temple is only a manifestation of the value which man 
attaches to beautiful buildings. Temples in honour 
of religion are in truth temples in honour of architec- 
ture. With the emerging of man from a state of sa- 
vagery and wildness to one of culture, with the dis- 
tinction between what is fitting for man and what is 
not fitting, arises simultaneously the distinction be- 
tween that which is fitting and that which is not fitting 
for God. God is the idea of majesty, of the highest 
dignity : the religious sentiment is the sentiment of su- 
preme fitness. The later more cultured artists of Geece 
were the first to embody in the statues of the gods the 
ideas of dignity, of spiritual grandeur, of imperturb- 
able repose and serenity. But why were these quali- 
ties in their view attributes, predicates of God? Be- 
cause they were in themselves regarded by the Greeks 
as divinities. Why did those artists exclude all dis- 
gusting and low passions? Because they perceived 
them to be unbecoming, unworthy, unhuman, and con- 
sequently ungodlike. The Homeric gods cat and drink; 
— that implies : eating and drinking is a divine plea- 
sure. Physical strength is an attribute of the Homeric 
gods : Zeus IS the strongest of the gods. Why? Be- 
cause physical strength, in and by itself, was regarded 
as something glorious, divine. To the ancient Ger- 
mans the highest virtues were those of the warrior; 
therefore, their supreme god was the god of war, Odin, 
— war, "the original or oldest law. ;; Not the attri- 



THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 43 

bute of the divinity, but the divineness or deity of the 
attribute, is the first true Divine Being. Thus what 
theology and philosophy have held- to be God, the Ab- 
solute, the Infinite, is not God; but that which they have 
held not to be God, is God : namely, the attribute, the 
quality, whatever has reality. Hence, he alone is the 
true atheist to whom the predicates of the Divine Be- 
ing, — for example, love, wisdom, justice, are nothing ; 
not he to whom merely the subject of these predicates 
is nothing. And in no wise is the negation of the 
subject necessarily also a negation of the predicates 
considered in themselves. These have an intrinsic, 
independent reality ; they force their recognition 
upon man by their very nature ; they are self-evident 
truths to him ; they prove, they attest themselves. It 
does not follow that goodness, justice, wisdom, are 
chimseras, because the existence of God is a chimsera, 
nor truths because this is a truth. The idea of God 
is dependent on the idea of justice, of benevolence ; a 
God w^ho is not benevolent, not just, not wise, is no 
God ; but the converse does not hold. The fact is not 
that a quality is divine because God has it, but that 
God has it because it is in itself divine : because with- 
out it God would be a defective being. Justice, wis- 
dom, in general every quality w r hich constitutes the 
-divinity of God, is determined and* known by itself, 
independently, but the idea of God is determined by 
the qualities which have thus been previously judged 
to be worthy of the divine nature ; only in the case in 
which I identify God and justice, in which I think of 
God immediately as the reality of the idea of justice, 
is the idea of God self-determined. But if God as a 
subject is the determined, while the quality, the predi- 
cate is the determining, then in truth the rank of the 
godhead is due not to the subject, but to the predi- 
cate. 

Not until several, and those contradictory, attributes 
are united in one being, and this being is conceived as 
personal — the personality being thus brought into 



44 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

especial prominence — not until then is the origin of 
religion lost sight of, is it forgotten that what the ac- 
tivity of the reflective power has converted into a 
predicate distinguishable or separable from the subject, 
was originally the true subject. Thus the Greeks and 
Romans deified accidents as substances : virtues, states 
of mind, passions, as independent beings. Man, espe- 
cially the religious man, is to himself the measure of 
all things, of all reality. Whatever strongly impresses 
a man, whatever produces an unsual effect on his mind, 
if it be only a peculiar, inexplicable sound or note, he 
personifies as a divine being. Religion embraces all 
the objects of the world ; everything existing has been 
an object of religious reverence ; in the nature and 
consciousness of religion there is nothing else than 
what lies in the nature of man and in his conscious- 
ness of himself and of the world. Religion has no 
material exclusively its own. In Rome even the 
passions of fear and terror had their temples. The 
Christians also made mental phenomena into indepen- 
dent beings, their own feelings into qualities of things, 
the passions which governed them into powers which 
governed the world, in short, predicates of their own 
nature, whether recognized as such or not, into inde- 
pendent subjective existences. Devils, cobolds, witch- 
es, ghosts, angels, were sacred truths as long as the 
religious spirit held undivided sway over mankind. 

In order to banish from the mind the identity of the 
divine and human predicates, and the consequent iden- 
tity of the divine and human nature, recourse is had 
to the idea that God, as the absolute, real Being, has 
an infinite fulness of various predicates, of which we 
here know only a part, and those such as are analogous 
to our own ; while the rest, by virtue of which God 
must thus have (juite a different nature from tin 4 human 
or that which is analogous to the human, we -hall only 
know in the future — tnal is, after death. But an infi- 
nite plenitude or multitude of predicates which are 
really different, so different that the one does not 



THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 45 

immediately involve the other, is realized only in an 
'infinite plenitude or multitude of different beings or 
individuals. Thus the human nature presents an infi- 
nite abundance of different predicates, and for that 
very reason it presents an infinite abundance of different 
individuals. Each new man is a new predicate, a new 
phasis of humanity. As many as are the men, so many 
are the powers, the properties of humanity. It is true 
that there are the same elements in every individual, 
but under such various conditions and modifications 
that they appear new and peculiar. The mystery of 
the inexhaustible fulness of the divine predicates is 
therefore nothing else than the mystery of human 
nature considered as an infinitely varied, infinitely 
modifiable, but, consequently, phenomenal being. Only 
in the realm of the senses, only in space and time, does 
there exist a being of really infinite qualities or pre- 
dicates. Where there are really different predicates, 
there are different times. One man is a distinguished 
musician, a distinguished author, a distinguished phy- 
sician ; but he cannot compose music, write books, and 
perform cures in the same moment of time. Time, and 
not the Hegelian dialectic, is the medium of uniting 
opposites, contradictories, in one and the-same subject. 
But distinguished and detached from the nature of 
man, and combined with the idea of God, the infinite 
fulness of various predicates is a conception without 
reality, a mere phantasy, a conception derived from 
the sensible world, but without the essential condi- 
tions, without the truth of sensible existence, a con- 
ception which stands in direct contradiction with the 
Divine Being considered as a spiritual, i. e., an ab- 
stract, simple, single being ; for the predicates of God 
are precisely of this character, that one involves all 
the others, because there is no real difference between 
them. If, therefore, in the present predicates I have 
not the future, in the present God not the future God, 
then the future God is not the present, but they are 
two distinct beings. But this distinction is in contra- 



46 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

diction Trith the unity and simplicity of the theologi- 
cal God.* Why is a given predicate a predicate of 
God? Because it is divine in its nature ; i. e., because 
it expresses no limitation, no defect. Why are other 
predicates applied to Him ? Because, however various 
in themselves, they agree in this, that they all alike ex- 
press perfection, unlimitedness. Hence I can conceive 
innumerable predicates of God, because they must all 
agree with the abstract idea of the Godhead, and must 
have in common that which constitutes every single 
predicate a divine attribute. Thus it is in the system 
of Spinoza. He speaks of an infinite number of attri- 
butes of the divine substance, but he specifies none ex- 
cept Thought and Extension. Why ? because it is a 
matter of indifference to know' them ; nay, because 
they are in themselves indifferent, superfluous : for 
with all these innumerable predicates, I yet always 
mean to say the same tiling as when I speak of thought 
and extension. Why is Thought an attribute of sub- 
stance? Because, according to Spinoza, it is capable 
of being conceived by itself, because it expresses some- 
thing indivisible, perfect, infinite. Why Extension or 
Matter? For the same reason. Thus, substance can 
have an indefinite number of predicates, because it is 
not their specific definition, their difference, but their 
identity, their equivalence, which makes them attri- 
butes of substance. Or rather, substance has innume- 
rable predicates only because (how strange !) it lias 
properly no predicate: that is, no definite, real predi- 
cate. The indefinite unity which is the product of 
thought, completes itself by the indefinite multiplicity 
which is the product of the imagination. Because the 
predicate is not multum. it is multa. In truth, the 
positive predicates are Thought and Extension. In 

* Fof religious faith there is do other distinction between the present 
and future God than that the former us an object of faith, of conception, 

of imagination, -while the latter i- to he an object nf immediate, that is, 
;i<>n. In this life, and in the next, he is the 

hut in the one he is incomprehensible, in the other, com- 
prohenAole, 



THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 47 

these two, infinitely more is said than in the nameless 
innumerable predicates ; for they express something 
definite, in them I have something. But substance is 
too indifferent, too apathetic, to be something ; that is, 
to have qualities and passions; that it may not be 
something, it is rather nothing. 

Now, when it is shown that what the subject is, lies 
entirely in the attributes of the subject; that is, that 
the predicate is the true subject ; it is also proved 
that if the divine predicates are attributes of the hu- 
man nature, the subject of those predicates is also of 
the human nature. But the divine predicates are partly 
general, partly personal. The general predicates are 
the metaphysical, but these serve only as external 
points of support to religion ; they are not the charac- 
teristic definitions of religion. It is the personal pre- 
dicates alone which constitute the essence of religion 
— in which the Divine Being is the object of religion. 
Such are, for example, that God is a Person, that he 
is the moral Law-giver, the Father of mankind, the 
Holy One, the Just, the Good, the Merciful. It is 
however at once clear, or it will at least be clear in 
the sequel, with regard to these and other definitions, 
that, especially as applied to a personality, they are 
purely human definitions, and that consequently man 
in religion — in his relation to God — is in relation to 
his own nature ; for to the religious sentiment these 
predicates are not mere conceptions, mere images, 
which man forms of God, to be distinguished from that 
which God is in himself, but truths, facts, realities. 
Religion knows nothing of anthropomorphisms ; to it 
they are not anthropomorphisms. It is the very essence 
of religion, that to it these definitions- express the na- 
ture of God. They are pronounced to be images only 
by the understanding, which reflects on religion, and 
which while defending them yet before its own tri- 
bunal denies them. But to the religious sentiment 
God is a real Father, real Love and Mercy ; for to it 
he is a real, living, personal being, and therefore his 



48 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

attributes are also living and personal. Nay, the de- 
finitions which are the most sufficing to the religious 
sentiment, are precisely those which give the most 
offence to the understanding, and which in the process 
of reflection on religion it denies. Religion is essen- 
tially emotion ; hence, objectively also, emotion is to 
it necessarily of a divine nature. Even anger appears 
to it an emotion not unworthy of God, provided only 
there be a religious motive at the foundation of this 
anger. 

But here it is also essential to observe, and this 
phenomenon is an extremely remarkable one, character- 
ising the very core of religion, that in proportion as 
the divine subject is in reality human, the greater is 
the apparent difference between God and man ; that 
is, the more, by reflection on religion, by theology, is 
the identity of the divine and human denied, and the 
human, considered as such, is depreciated.* The rea- 
son of this is, that as what is positive in the conception 
of the divine being can only be human, the conception 
of man, as an object of consciousness can only be 
negative. To enrich God, man must become poor ; 
that God may be all, man must be nothing. But he 
desires to be nothing in himself, because what he takes 
from himself is not lost to him, since it is preserved in 
God. Man has his being in God; why then should 
he have it in himself? Where is the necessity of po- 
siting the same thing twice, of having it twice? What 
man withdraws from himself, what he renounces in 
himself, he only enjoys in an incomparably higher and 
fuller measure in God. 

The monks made a vow of chastity to God; they 
mortified the sexual passion in themselves, but thcre- 

* Inter creatorcm <-t preaturam aon potest tanta aimilitudo notari, quin 
inter e il diasimilitudo notanja. — Later. Cone. can. 2. (Snrama 

Omn. I anza, Antw. 15&9. p. 326.) The last distinction 

:: man ami God, between the Unite and infinite nature, to which 
•ilative imagination soars, i;> the distinction het»veen 
thing and Nothing, Ijh and Non Ens; for only in Nothing is all 
community with other beings abolished. 



THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 49 

fore they had in Heaven, in the Virgin Mary, the 
image of woman — an image of love. They could the 
more easily dispense with real woman, in proportion 
as an ideal woman was an object of love to them. The 
greater the importance they attached to the denial of 
sensuality, the greater the importance of the Heavenly 
Virgin for them: she was to them in the place of 
Christ, in the stead of God. The more the sensual 
tendencies are renounced, the more sensual is the God 
to whom they are sacrificed. For whatever is made 
an offering to God has an especial value attached to 
it ; in it God is supposed to have especial pleasure. 
That which is the highest in the estimation of man, is 
naturally the highest in the estimation of his God — 
what pleases man, pleases God also. The Hebrews 
did not offer to Jehovah unclean, ill-conditioned ani- 
mals ; on the contrary, those which they most highly 
prized, which they themselves ate, were also the food 
of God (cibus Dei, Levit. iii. 2.) Wherever, therefore, 
the denial of the sensual delights is made a special 
offering, a sacrifice well-pleasing to God, there the 
highest value is attached to the senses, and the sensua- 
lity which has been renounced is unconsciously restor- 
ed, in the fact that God takes the place of the ma- 
terial delights which have been renounced. The nun 
weds herself to God ; she has a heavenly bridegroom, 
the monk a heavenly bride. But the heavenly virgin 
is only a sensible presentation of a general truth, 
having relation to the essence of religion. Man denies 
as to himself only what he attributes to God. Eeligion 
abstracts from man, from the world ; but it can only 
abstract from the limitations, from the phenomena, in 
short, from the negative, not from the essence, the po- 
sitive, of the world and humanity : hence, in the very 
abstraction and negation it must recover that from 
which it abstracts, or believes itself to abstract. And 
thus, in reality, whatever religion consciously denies 
— always supposing that what is denied by it is some- 
thing essential, true, and consequently incapable of 

c 



50 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

being ultimately denied — it unconsciously restores in 
God. Thus, in religion man denies his reason ; of him- 
self he knows nothing of -God, his thoughts are only 
worldly, earthly ; he can only believe what God re- 
veals to him. But on this account the thoughts of 
God are human, earthly thoughts : like man, He has 
plans in his mind, he accommodates himself to circum- 
stances and grades of intelligence, like a tutor with 
his pupils ; he calculates closely the effect of his gifts 
and revelations ; he observes man in all his doings ; 
he knows all things, even the most earthly, the com- 
monest, the most trivial. In brief, man in relation to 
God denies his own knowledge, his own thoughts, 
that he may place them in God. Man gives up his 
personality ; but in return, God, the Almighty, infinite, 
unlimited being, is a person ; he denies human dignity, 
the human ego ; but in return God is to him a selfish, 
egotistical being, who in all things seeks only Himself, 
his own honour, his own ends ; he represents God as 
simply seeking the satisfaction of his own selfishness, 
while yet He frowns on that of every other being; his 
God is the very luxury of egotism.* Religion further 
denies goodness as a quality of human nature; man 
is wicked, corrupt, incapable of good ; but on the other 
hand, God is only good — the Good Being. Man's na- 
ture demands as an object of goodness, personified as 
God ; but is it not hereby declared that goodness is 
an essential tendency of man ? If my heart is wicked, 
my understanding perverted, how can I perceive and 
feel the holy to be holy, the good to be good? Could 
I perceive the beauty of a {hie picture, if my mind were 
aesthetically an absolute piece of perversion ? Though 
I may not be a painter, though 1 may not have the 
power of producing what is beautiful myself, 1 must 
yet have aesthetic feeling, esthetic comprehension, since 

* Gloriam mam plui amal Den- quam omnes cieatoxas. "God can 

only love himself can only think of himself, can only work tor himself. 
In creating man, God seeks hi- 0W9 ends, his own iilory." &0. — Vi<l. }\ 
Bayle. Ein Beitrag znr Geschichte der Philos. u. MensohlL p. 104-107. 



THE ESSENCE OP RELIGION. 51 

I perceive the beauty that is presented to me exter- 
nally. Either goodness does not exist at all for man, 
or, if it does exist, therein is revealed to the individual 
man the holiness and goodness of human nature. That 
which is absolutely opposed to my nature, to which I 
am united by no bond of sympathy, is not even con- 
ceivable or perceptible by me. The Holy is is oppo- 
sition to me only as regards the modifications of my 
personality, but as regards my fundamental nature it 
is in unity with me. The Holy is a reproach to my 
sinfulness ; in it I recognise myself as a sinner ; but in 
so doing, while I blame myself, I acknowledge what I 
am not, but ought to be, and what, for that very rea- 
son, I according to my destination, can be ; for an 
" ought" which has no corresponding capability, does 
not affect me, is a ludicrous chimsera without any true 
relation to my mental constitution. But when I ac- 
knowledge goodness as my destination, as my law, I 
acknowledge it, whether consciously or unconsciously, 
as my own nature. Another nature than my own, one 
different in quality, cannot touch me. 1 can perceive 
sin as sin, only when I perceive it to be a contradic- 
tion of myself with myself — that is, of my personality 
with my fundamental nature. As a contradiction of 
the absolute, considered as another being, the feeling 
of sin is inexplicable, unmeaning. 

The distinction between Augustinianism and Pela- 
gianism consists only in this, that the former expresses 
after the manner of religion what the latter expresses 
after the manner of rationalism. But say the same 
thing, both vindicate the goodness of man ; but Pela- 
gianism does it directly, in a rationalistic and moral 
form, Augustinianism indirectly, in a mystical, that is, 
a religious form.* For that which is given to man's 

* Pelagianism denies God, religion — isti tantam tribuunt protestatem 
voluntati, ut pietati auferant orationem. (Augustin de Nat. et Grat. 
cont. Pelagium, c. 58.) It has only the Creator, i. e., Nature, as a basis, 
not the Saviour, the true God of the religious sentiment — in a word, it 
denies God ; but, as a consequence of this, it elevates man into a God, 

c2 



52 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

God, is in truth given to man himself ; what a man 
declares concerning God, he in truth declares con- 
cerning himself. Augustinianism would be a truth, 
and a truth opposed to Pelagianism, only if man had 
the devil for his God, and with the consciousness that 
he was the devil, honoured, reverenced, and worship- 
ped him as the highest being. But so long as man 
adores a good being as his God, so long does he con- 
template in God the goodness of his own nature. 

As with the doctrine of the radical corruption of 
human nature, so is it with the identical doctrine, that 
man can do nothing good, i. e., in truth, nothing of 
himself — by his own strength. For the denial of hu- 
man strength and spontaneous moral activity to be 
true, the moral activity of God must also be denied; and 
we must say, with the oriental nihilist or pantheist : 
the Divine being is absolutely without will or action, 
indifferent, knowing nothing of the discrimination be- 
tween evil and good. But he who defines God as an 
active being, and not only so, but as morally active 
and morally critical, — as a being who loves, works, 
and rewards good, punishes, rejects, and condemns 
evil.- — he who thus defines God, only in appearance 
denies human activity, in fact making it the highest, the 
most real activity. He who makes God act humanly, 
declares human activity to be divine ; he says : a god 
who is not active, and not morally or humanly active, 
is no god; and thus he makes theidea of the Godhead 
dependent on the idea of activity, that is, of human 
activity, for a higher he knows not. 

Man — this is the mystery of religion — projects his 
being into objectivity, and then again makes himself 

H makes him ■ being not needing God, Belf-enffidng, independent 

:: this subject Luther against Erasmus and Augustine, 1. c. c 88.) 

itinianiflm denies man; but, as s consequence of this, it reduces 

God to the level of man, even to the ignominy of the cross, for the sake 

iiKT pntS man in the place of God, the hitter p 

place of man ; both lead to the same result — the distinction ie only 
apparent, a pious illusion. Augustmianism is only an inverted Pela- 
gianiam ; -what to the Utter is ■ subject, is to Che Conner an ohjcct. 



THE ESSENCE OP RELIGION. 53 

an object- to this projected image of himself thus con- 
vert ed into a subject ; he thinks of himself, is an object 
to himself, but as the object of an object, of another 
being than himself. Thus here. Man is an object to 
God. That man is good or evil is not indifferent to 
God ; no ! He has a lively, profound interest in man's 
being good; he wills that man should be good, happy, 
for without goodness there is no happiness. Thus the 
religious man virtually retracts the nothingness of 
human activity, by making his dispositions and actions 
an object to God, by making man the end of God — 
for that which is an object to the mind is an end in 
action ; by making the divine activity a means of hu- 
man salvation. God acts, that man may be good and 
happy. Thus man, while he is apparently humiliated 
to the lowest degree, is in truth exalted to the highest. 
Thus, in and through God, man has in view himself 
alone. It is true that man places the aim of his action 
in God, but God has no other aim of action than the 
moral and eternal salvation of man : thus man has in 
fact no other aim than himself. The divine activity 
is not distinct from the human. 

How could the divine activity work on me as its 
object, nay, work in me, if it were essentially different 
from me ; how could it have a human aim, the aim of 
ameliorating and blessing man, if it were not itself 
human ? Does not the purpose determine the nature 
of the act ? When man makes his moral improvement 
an aim to himself, he has divine resolutions, divine 
projects ; but also, when God seeks the salvation of 
man, He has human ends and a human mode of acti- 
vity, corresponding to these ends. Thus in God man 
has only his own activity as an object. But, for the 

* The religions, the original mode in which man becomes objective 
to himself, is (as is clearly enongh explained in this work) to be distin- 
guished from the mode in which this occnrs in reflection and speculation ; 
the latter is voluntary, the former involuntary, necessary — as necessary 
as art, as speech. With the progress of time, it is true, theology coin- 
cides with religion. 



54 THE ESSENCE OP CHRISTIANITY. 

very reason that he regards his own activity as objec- 
tive, goodness only as an object, he necessarily re- 
ceives the impulse, the motive, not from himself, but 
from his object. He contemplates his nature as ex- 
ternal to himself, and this nature as goodness ; thus it 
is self-evident, it is mere tautology to say, that the 
impulse to good comes only from thence where he 
places the good. 

God is the highest subjectivity of man abstracted 
from himself ; hence man can do nothing of himself, 
all goodness comes from God. The more subjective 
God is, the more completely does man divest himself 
of his subjectivity, because God is, per se, his relin- 
quished self, the possession of which he however again 
vindicates to himself. As the action of the arteries 
drives the blood into the extremities, and the action of 
the veins brings it back again, the life in general con- 
sists in a perpetual systole and diastole; so is it in reli- 
gion. In the religious systole man propels his own nature 
from himself, he throws himself outward ; in the reli- 
gious diastole he receives the rejected nature into his 
heart again. God alone is the being who acts of him- 
self, — this is the force of repulsion in religion ; God 
is the being who acts in me, with me, through me, 
upon me, for me, is the principle of my salvation, of 
my good dispositions and actions, consequently my 
own good principle and nature, — this is the force of 
attraction in religion. 

The course of religious development which has been 
generally indicated, consists specifically in this, that 
man abstracts more and more from God, and attri- 
butes more and more to himself. This is especially 
apparent in the belief in revelation. That which to a 
later age or a cultured people is given by nature or 
reason, is to an earlier age, or to a yet uncultured 
people, given by God. Every tendency of man, how- 
ever natural ei en the impulse of cleanliness, was con- 
ceived by ihr Israelites as a positive divine ordinance. 
From this example we again see that God is lowered, 



THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 55 

is conceived more entirely on the type of ordinary hu- 
manity, in proportion as man detracts from himself. 
How can the self-humiliation of man go further than 
when he disclaims the capability of fulfilling spon- 
taneously the requirements of common decency ?* The 
Christian religion, on the other hand, distinguished 
the impulses and passions of man according to their 
quality, their character ; it represented only good 
emotions, good dispositions, good thoughts, as revela- 
tions, operations, — that is, as dispositions, feelings, 
thoughts, — of God ; for what God reveals is a quality 
of God himself: that of which the heart is full, over- 
flows the lips, as is the effect such is the cause, as the 
revelation, such the being who reveals himself. A 
God who reveals himself in good dispositions is a God 
whose essential attribute is only moral perfection. The 
Christian religion distinguishes inward moral purity 
from external physical purity ; the Israelites identified 
the two.f In relation to the Israelitish religion, the 
Christian religion is one of criticism and freedom. 
The Israelite trusted himself to do nothing except what 
was commanded by God, he was without will even in 
external things ; the authority of religion extended it- 
self even to his food. The Christian religion, on the 
other hand, in all these external things, made man de- 
pendent on himself, i. e., placed in man what the Israel- 
ite placed out of himself, in God. Israel is the most 
complete presentation of positivism in religion. In re- 
lation to the Israelite, the Christian is an esprit fort, 
a free-thinker. Thus do things change. What yes- 
terday was still religion, is no longer such to-day ; and 
what to-day is atheism, to-morrow will be religion. 

* Dent, xxiii. 12, 13. 

f See, for example, Gen. xxxv. 2 ; Levit. xi. 44 ; xx. 26 ; and the 
Commentary of Le Clerc on these passages. 



56 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 



PART I. 

THE TRUE OR ANTHROPOLOGICAL ESSENCE 
OF RELIGION. 



CHAPTER II. 

GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 

Religion is the disuniting of man from himself: he 
sets God before him as the antithesis of himself. God 
is not what man is — man is not what God is. God is 
the infinite, man the finite being ; God is perfect, man 
imperfect ; God eternal, man temporal ; God almighty, 
man weak ; God holy, man sinful. God and man are 
extremes : God is the absolutely positive, the sum of 
all realities ; man the absolutely negative, comprehen- 
ding all negations. 

But in religion man contemplates his own latent 
nature. Hence it must be shown that this antithesis, 
this differencing of God and man, with which religion 
begins, is a differencing of man with his own nature. 
* The inherent necessity of this proof is at once ap- 
parent from this — that, if the divine nature, which is 
the object of religion, were really different from the 
nature of man, a division, a disunion could not take 
place. If God is really a different being from myself, 
why should hi- perfection trouble me? Disunion exists 
only between beings who are at variance, but who 
ought to be one, who can be one, and who consequently 
in nature, in truth, are one. On this general ground, 



GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 57 

then, the nature with which man feels himself in dis- 
union, must be inborn, immanent in himself, but at the 
same time it must be of a different character from that 
nature or power which gives him the feeling, the con- 
sciousness of reconciliation, of union with God, or, what 
is the same thing, with himself. 

This nature is nothing else than the intelligence — 
the reason or the understanding. God is the anti- 
thesis of man, as a being not human, u e., not perso- 
nally human, is the objective nature of the understand- 
ing. The pure, perfect divine nature is the self-con- 
sciousness of the understanding, the consciousness 
which the understanding has of its own perfection. 
The understanding knows nothing of the sufferings of 
the heart : it has no desires, no passions, no wants, and 
for that reason, no deficiences and weaknesses, as the 
heart has. Men in whom the intellect predominates, 
who with one-sided but all the more characteristic de- 
finiteness, embody and personify for us the nature of 
the understanding, are free from the anguish of the 
heart, from the passions, the excesses of the man who 
has strong emotions ; they are not passionately inter- 
ested in any finite, i. e.. particular object ; they do not 
give themselves in pledge ; they are free. " To want 
nothing, and by this freedom from wants to become 
like the immortal Gods f — "not to subject ourselves 
to things but things to us ;" — " all is vanity f — these 
and similar sayings are the mottoes of the men who 
are governed by abstract understanding. The under- 
standing is that part of our nature which is neutral, 
impassible, not to be bribed, not subject to illusions — 
the pure, passionless light of the intelligence. It is 
the categorical, impartial consciousness of the fact as 
fact, because it is itself of an objective nature. It is 
the consciousness of the uncontradictory, because it is 
itself the uncontradictory unity, the source of logical 
identity. It is the consciousness of law, necessity, 
rule, measure, because it is itself the activity of law, 
the necessity of the nature of things under the form of 

c3 



58 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

spontaneous activity, the rule of rules, the absolute 
measure, the measure of measures. Only by the under- 
standing can man judge and act in contradiction with 
his dearest human, that is, personal feelings, when the 
God of the understanding, — law, necessity, right, — 
commands it. The father who as a judge condemns 
his own son to death because he knows him to be 
guilty, can do this only as a rational not as an emo- 
tional being. The understanding shews us the faults 
and weaknesses even of our beloved ones ; it shews us 
even our own. It is for this reason that it so often 
throws us into painful collision with ourselves, with 
our own hearts. We do not like to give reason the 
upper hand : we are too tender to ourselves to carry 
out the true, but hard, relentless verdict of the under- 
standing. The understanding is the power which has 
relation to species : the heart represents particular cir- 
cumstances, individuals, — the understanding, general 
circumstances, universals ; it is the superhuman, i. e., 
the impersonal power in man. Only by and in the 
understanding has man the power of abstraction from 
himself, from his subjective being, — of exalting him- 
self to general ideas and relations, of distinguishing 
the object from the impressions which it produces on 
his feelings, of regarding it in and by itself without 
reference to human personality. Philosophy, mathe- 
matics, astronomy, physics, in short, science in general, 
is the practical proof, because it is the product, of this 
truly infinite and divine activity. Religious anthropo- 
morphisms, therefore, arc in contradiction with the 
understanding : it repudiates their application to God ; 
it denies them. But this God, free From anthropomor- 
phisms, impartial, passionless, is nothing else than the 
nature of the understanding itself regarded as objective. 
God as God, thai is, as a being not finite, not human, 
not materially conditioned, not phenomenal, is only an 
object of thought !b i is the incorporeal, formless, in- 
comprehensible— the abstract, negative being: he is 
known, i. c, becomes an object, only by abstraction 



GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 59 

and negation (via negationis). Why? Because he is 
nothing but the objective nature of the thinking power, 
or in general, of the power or activity, name it what 
you will, whereby man is conscious of reason, of mind, 
of intelligence. There is no other spirit, that is, (for 
the idea of spirit is simply the idea of thought, of in- 
telligence, of understanding, every other spirit being 
a spectre of the imagination,) no other intelligence 
which man can believe in or conceive, than that in- 
telligence which enlightens him, which is active in him. 
He can do nothing more than separate the intelligence 
from the limitations of his own individuality. The "infi- 
nite spirit," in distinction from the finite, is therefore 
nothing else than the intelligence disengaged from the 
limits of individuality and corporeality, — for individu- 
ality and corporeality are inseparable, — intelligence 
posited in and by itself. God, said the schoolmen, the 
Christian fathers, and long before them the heathen phi- 
losophers, — God is immaterial essence, intelligence, spi- 
rit, pure understanding. Of God as God, no image can 
be made ; but canst thou frame an image of mind? Has 
mind a form ? Is not its activity the most inexplicable, 
the most incapable of representation? God is incom- 
prehensible ; but knowest thou the nature of the intelli- 
gence ? Hast thou searched out the mysterious ope- 
ration of thought, the hidden nature of self-conscious- 
ness ? Is not self-consciousness the enigma of enigmas ? 
Did not the old mystics, schoolmen, and fathers long 
ago compare the incomprehensibility of the divine 
nature with that of the human intelligence, and thus, 
in truth, identify the nature of God with the nature 
of man ?* God as God — as a purely thinkable being, 

* Augustine, in his work Contra Academicos, which he wrote when he 
was still in some measure a heathen, says (1. iii. c. 12), that the highest 
good of man consists in the mind, or in the reason. On the other hand, 
in his Libr. Betractationum, which he wrote as a distinguished Christian 
and theologian, he revises (1. i. c. 1) this declaration as follows : — Verius 
dixissem in Deo. Ipso enim mens fruitur, ut beata sit, tanquam summo 
bono suo. But is there any distinction here ? Where my highest good is, 
is not there my nature also ? 



60 THE ESSENCE OP CHRISTIANITY 

an object of the intellect, — is thus nothing else than 
the reason in its utmost intensification become objec- 
tive to itself. It is asked what is the understanding 
or the reason ? The answer is found in the idea of 
God. Everything must express itself, reveal itself, 
make itself objective, affirm itself. God is the reason 
expressing, affirming itself as the highest existence. 
To the imagination, the reason is the revelation of God ; 
but to the reason, God is the revelation of the reason ; 
since what reason is, what it can do, is first made ob- 
jective in God. God is a need of the intelligence, a 
necessary thought — the highest degree of the thinking 
power. " The reason cannot rest in sensuous things f 
it can find contentment only when it penetrates to the 
highest, first, necessary being, which can be an object 
to the reason alone. Why ? Because with the con- 
ception of this being it first completes itself, because 
only in the idea of the highest nature is the highest 
nature of reason existent, the highest step of the think- 
ing power attained ; and it is a general truth, that we 
feel a blank, a void, a want in ourselves, and are con- 
sequently unhappy and unsatisfied, so long as we have 
not come to the last degree of a power, to that quo 
nihil ma jus cocjiiari potest, — so long as we cannot bring 
our inborn capacity for this or that art, this or that 
science, to the utmost proficiency. For only in the 
highest proficiency is art truly art ; only in its highest 
degree is thought truly thought, reason. Only when 
thy thought is God, dost thou truly think, rigorously 
speaking ; for only God is the realized, consummate, 
exhausted thinking power. Thus in conceiving God, 
man first conceives reason as it truly is, though by 
means of the imagination he conceives this divine na- 
ture as distinct from reason, because as a being affected 
by external things he is accustomed always to dis- 
tinguish the objeel from the conception of it. And 
here lie applies the Bame process to the conception of 
the reason, thus, for an existence in reason, in thought, 
substituting an i xii tencc in space and time, from which 



GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 61 

he had, nevertheless, previously abstracted it. God, 
as a metaphysical being, is the intelligence satisfied 
in itself, or rather, conversely, the intelligence satis- 
fied in itself, thinking itself as the absolute being, is 
God as a metaphysical being. Hence all metaphysical 
predicates of God are real predicates only when they 
are recognised as belonging to thought, to intelligence, 
to the understanding. 

The understanding is that which conditionates and 
co-ordinates all things, that which all things in reci- 
procal dependence and connexion, because it is itself 
immediate and unconditioned : it inquires for the cause 
of all things, because it has its own ground and end in 
itself. Only that which itself is nothing deduced, 
nothing derived, can deduce and construct, can regard 
ail besides itself as derived ; just as only that which 
exists for its own sake can view and treat other things 
as means and instruments. The understanding is thus 
the original, primitive being. The understanding de- 
rives all things from God, as the first cause, it finds 
the world, without an intelligent cause, given over to 
senseless, aimless chance ; that is, it finds only in it- 
self, in its own nature, the efficient and the final cause 
of the world — the existence of the world is only then 
jclear and comprehensible when it sees the explanation 
of that existence in the source of all clear and intelli- 
gible ideas, i. e., in itself. The being that works with 
design, towards certain ends, i. e., with understanding, 
is alone the being that to the understanding has imme- 
diate certitude, self-evidence. Hence that which of it- 
self has no designs, no purpose, must have the cause 
of its existence in the design of another, and that an 
intelligent being. And thus the understanding posits 
its own nature as the causal, first, premundane exis- 
tence : i. e., being in rank the first, but in time the last, 
it makes itself the first in time also. 

The understanding is to itself the criterion of all 
reality. That which is opposed to the understanding, 
that which is self-contradictory, is nothing ; that which 



62 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

contradicts reason, contradicts God. For example, it 
is a contradiction of reason to connect with the idea 
of the highest reality the limitations of definite time 
and place ; and hence reason denies these of God, as 
contradicting his nature. The reason can only believe 
in a God who is accordant with its own nature, in a 
God who is not beneath its own dignity, who on the 
contrary is a realization of its own nature : i.e., the 
reason believes only in itself, in the absolute reality of 
its own nature. The reason is not dependent on God, 
but God on the reason. Even in the age of miracles 
and faith in authority, the understanding constitutes 
itself, at least formally, the criterion of divinity. God 
is all and can do all, it was said, by virtue of his omnipo- 
tence ; but nevertheless he is nothing and he can do 
nothing which contradicts himself, L e., reason. Even 
omnipotence cannot do what is contrary to reason. 
Thus above the divine omnipotence stands the higher 
power of reason ; above the nature of God the nature 
of the understanding, as the criterion of that which is 
to be affirmed and denied of God, the criterion of the 
positive and negative. Canst thou believe in a God 
who is an unreasonable and wicked being? No, in- 
deed ; but why not? Because it is in contradiction 
with thy understanding to accept a wicked and unrea- 
sonable being as divine. What then dost thou affirm, 
what is an object to thee, in God? Thy own under- 
standing. God is thy highest idea, the supreme effort 
of thy understanding, thy highest power of thought. 
God is the sum of all realities, i. c, the sum of all 
affirmations of the understanding. That which I re- 
cognize in tin.' understanding as essential, I place in 
God as existent: God is, what the understanding 
thinks as the highest. But in what I perceive to be 
essential, Is revealed the nature of my understanding, 
own the power of my thinking faculty. 
Thus tin' understanding is the i w realis imum, the 
most real being of the old onto-theology. ''Funda- 
mentally.'* says onto-theology, "we cannot conceive 



GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 63 

God otherwise than by attributing to him without limit 
all the real qualities which we find in ourselves.* 
Our positive, essential qualities, our realities, are 
therefore the realities of God, but in us they exist 
with, in God without, limits. But what then with- 
draws the limits from the realities, what does away 
with the limits ? The understanding. What, accord- 
ing to this, is the nature conceived without limits, but 
the nature of the understanding releasing, abstracting 
itself from all limits? As thou thinkest God, such is 
thy thought ; — the measure of thy God is the measure of 
thy understanding. If thou conceivest God as limited, 
thy understanding is limited ; if thou conceivest God 
as unlimited, thy understanding is unlimited. If, for 
example, thou conceivest God as a corporeal being, 
corporeality is the boundary, the limit of thy under- 
standing, thou canst conceive nothing without a body; 
if on the contrary thou deniest corporeality of God, 
this is a corroboration and proof of the freedom of thy 
understanding from the limitation of corporeality. In 
the unlimited divine nature thou representest only thy 
unlimited understanding. And when thou declarest 
this unlimited being the ultimate essence, the highest 
being, thou sayest in reality nothing else than this: 
the eire supreme, the highest being, is the under- 
standing. 

The understanding is further the seif-subsistent and 
independent being. That which has no understanding 
is not self-subsistent, is dependent. A man without 
understanding is a man without will. He who has no 
understanding allows himself to be deceived, imposed 
upon, used as an instrument by others. How shall he 
whose understanding is the tool of another, have an 
independent will ? Only he who thinks, is free and 
independent. It is only by the understanding that 
man reduces the things around and beneath him to 
mere means of his own existence. In general : that 

* Kant Vorles. uber d. philos. Religional. Leipzig. 1817. p. 39. 



64 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

only is self-subsistent and independent which is an 
end to itself, an object to itself. That which is an 
end and object to itself, is for the very reason — in so 
far as it is an object to itself — no longer a means and 
object for another being. To be without understand- 
ing is, in one word, to exist for another, — to be an 
object : to have understanding is to exist for oneself, 
— to be a subject. But that which no longer exists for 
another, but for itself, rejects all dependence on ano- 
ther being. It is true, we, as physical beings, depend 
on the beings external to us, even as to the modifica- 
tions of thought : but in so far as we think, in the ac- 
tivity of the understanding as such, we are dependent 
on no other being. Activity of thought is spontaneous 
activity. " When I think, I am conscious that my eao 
in me thinks, and not some other thing. I conclude, 
therefore, that this thinking in me does not inhere in 
another thing outside of me, but in myself, conse- 
quently that 1 am a substance, L e., that I exist by my- 
self, without being a predicate of another being,"* 
Although we always need the air, yet as natural philo- 
sophers we convert the air from an object of our phy- 
sical need into an object of the self-sufficing activity 
of thought, i. e., into a mere thing for us. In breath- 
ing I am the object of the air, the air the subject; but 
when I make the air an object of thought, of investi- 
gation, when I analyze it, I reverse this relation, — I 
make myself the subject, the air an object. But that 
which is the object of another being is dependent. 
Thus the plant is dependent on air and light, that is, 
it is an object for air and light, not for itself. It is 
true that air and light are reciprocally an object for 
the plant. Physical life, in general, is nothing else 
than this perpetual interchange of the objective and 
subjective relation. We consume the air, and are 
consumed by it : we enjoy, and are enjoyed. The 
understanding alone enjoys all things without being 

* Kant, 1. C. p. M>. 



GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 65 

itself enjoyed ; it is the self-enjoying, self sufficing exist- 
ence — the absolute subject — the subject which cannot 
be reduced to the object of another being, because it 
makes all things objects, predicates of itself, — which 
comprehends all things in itself because it is itself not 
a thing, because it is free from all things. 

That is dependent, the possibility of whose existence 
lies out of itself ; that is independent which has the 
possibility of its existence in itself. Life therefore 
involves the contradiction of an existence at once de- 
pendent and independent, — the contradiction that its 
possibility lies both in itself and out of itself. The 
understanding alone is free from this and other contra- 
dictions of life ; it is the essence perfectly self-subsis- 
tent, perfectly at one with itself, perfectly self-existent.* 
Thinking is existence in self ; life, as differenced from 
thought, existence out of self ; life is to give from one- 
self, thought is to take into oneself. Existence out of 
self is the world, existence in self is God. To think 
is to be God. The act of thought, as such, is the freedom 
of the immortal gods from all external limitations 
and necessities of life. 

The unity of the understanding is the unity of God. 
To the understanding the consciousness of its unity and 
universality is essential : the understanding is itself 
nothing else than the consciousness of itself as absolute 
identity, i. e. x that which is accordant with the under- 
standing is to it an absolute, universally valid, law ; 
it is impossible to the understanding to think that 
what is self-contradictory, false, irrational, can any- 
where be true, and, conversely, that what is true, ra- 
tional, can anywhere be false and irrational. " There 
may be intelligent beings who are not like me, and 

* To guard against mistake I observe, that I do not apply to the un- 
derstanding the expression, self-subsistent essence, and other terms of a 
like character, in my own sense, but that I am here placing myself on 
the stand-point of onto-theology, of metaphysical theology in general, in 
order to shew that metaphysics is resolvable into psychology, that the 
onto-theological predicates are merely predicates of the understanding. 



66 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

yet I am certain that there are no intelligent beings 
who know laws and truths different from those which 
I recognise ; for every mind necessarily sees that two 
and two make four, and that one must prefer one's 
friend to one's dog.' ; * Of an essentially different un- 
derstanding from that which affirms itself in man, I 
have not the remotest conception, the faintest adum- 
bration. On the contrary, every understanding which 
I posit as different from my own, is only a position of 
my own understanding, i. e., an idea of my own, a con- 
ception which falls within my power of thought, and 
thus expresses my understanding. What I think, that 
I myself do, of course only in purely intellectual mat- 
ters ; what I think of as united, I unite ; what I think 
of as distinct, I distinguish ; what I think of as abo- 
lished, as negatived, that I myself abolish and negative. 
For example, if I conceive an understanding in which 
the intuition or reality of the object is immediately 
united with the thought of it, I actually unite it ; my 
understanding or my imagination is itself the power 
of uniting these distinct or opposite ideas. How 
would it be possible for me to conceive them united — 
whether this conception be clear or confused' — if I did 
not unite them in myself? But whatever may be the 
conditions of the understanding which a given human 
individual may suppose as distinguished from his own, 
this other understanding is only the understanding 
which exists in man in general — the understanding 
conceived apart from the limits of this particular in- 
dividual. Unity is involved in the idea of the under- 
standing. The impossibility for the understanding to 
think two supreme beings, two infinite substances, two 
Gods, is the impossibility for the understanding to 
contradict itself, to deny its own nature, to think of 
itself as divided. 

* Afalebranche. (See the author^ Geschichte der Philos. I. Bd. 
].. 822.) Exstaretne alibi diverse ab hac ratio? censereturque injustum 
ant Boeleatam in Jove auf Marte, quod apud noa justum ac pnvclaniin 
habotor? Certc nee verisimile nee omnio possibile. — Chr. liugenii. 
(Coemotheoroe, lib. i.) 



GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 67 

The understanding is the infinite being. Infinitude 
is immediately involved in unity, and finiteness in 
plurality. Finiteness — in the metaphysical sense — 
rests on the distinction of the existence from the 
essence, of the individual from the species ; infinitude, 
on the unity of existence and essence. Hence, that is 
finite which can be compared with other beings of the 
same species ; that is infinite which has nothing like 
itself, which consequently does not stand as an indi- 
vidual under a species, but is species and individual 
in one, essence and existence in one. But such is the 
understanding ; it has its essence in itself, consequently, 
it has nothing together with or external to itself which 
can be ranged beside it ; it is incapable of being com- 
pared, because it is itself the source of all combinations 
and comparisons ; immeasurable, because it is the mea- 
sure of all measures,' — we measure all things by the 
understanding alone ; it can be circumscribed by no 
higher generalization, it can be ranged under no spe- 
cies, because it is itself the principle of all generaliz- 
ing, of all classification, because it circumscribes all 
things and beings. The definitions which the specu- 
lative philosophers and theologians give of God, as 
the being in whom existence and essence are not sep- 
arable, who himself is all the attributes which he has, 
so that predicate and subject are with him identical, 
— all these definitions are thus ideas drawn solely from 
the nature of the understanding. 

Lastly, the understanding or the reason is the ne- 
cessary being. Reason exists because only the exist- 
ence of the reason is reason ; because, if there were no 
reason, no consciousness, all would be nothing ; exist- 
ence would be equivalent to non-existence. Conscious- 
ness first founds the distinction between existence and 
non-existence. In consciousness is first revealed the 
value of existence, the value of nature. Why, in ge- 
neral, does something exist? why does the world exist? 
on the simple ground that if something did not exist, 
nothing would exist : if reason did not exist, there 



68 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

would be only unreason ; thus the world exists because 
it is an absurdity that the world should not exist. In 
the absurdity of its non-existence is found the true 
reason of its existence, in the groundlessness of the 
supposition that it were not, the reason that it is. 
Nothing, non-existence, is aimless, nonsensical, irra- 
tional. Existence alone has an aim, a foundation, 
rationality ; existence is, because only existence is 
reason and truth ; existence is the absolute necessity. 
What is the cause of conscious existence, of life? The 
need of life. But to whom is it a need? To that 
which does not live. It is not a being who saw that 
made the eye : to one who saw already, to what pur- 
pose would be the eye ? Xo ! only the being who saw 
not needed the eye. We are all come into the world 
without the operation of knowledge and will ; but we 
are come that knowledge and will may exist. Whence, 
then, came the world ? Out of necessity ; not out of a 
necessity which lies in another being distinct from it- 
self — that is a pure contradiction, — but out of its own 
inherent necessity ; out of the necessity of necessity ; 
because without the world there would be no necessity; 
without necessity, no reason, no understanding. The 
nothing, out of which the world came, is nothing with- 
out the world. It is true that thus, negativity, as the 
speculative philosophers express themselves — nothing 
is the cause of the world ; — but a nothing which abo- 
lishea itself, i. e., a nothing which could not have existed 
if there had been no world. It is true that the world 
Bpringa out of a want, out of privation, but it is false 
speculation to make this privation an ontological being: 
this want is simply the want which lies in the supposed 
uon-existence of the world. Thus the world is only 
sssary out of itself and through itself. But the ne- 
ity of the world is the necessity of reason. The 
reason, as the sum of all realities, — for what are all 
the glories of the world without light, much more ex- 
ternal li'_rht without internal light? — the reason is the 
mosl indispensable being — the profoundest and most 



GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 69 

essential necessity. In the reason first lies the self- 
consciousness of existence, self-conscious existence ■ in 
the reason is first revealed the end, the meaning of 
existence. Eeason is existence objective to itself as 
its own end : the ultimate tendency of things. That 
which is an object to itself j^ the highest, the final 
being : that which has pog&ver over itself is almighty. 



70 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

CHAPTER III. 
GOD AS A MORAL BEING, OR LAW. 

God as God — the infinite, universal, non-anthropo- 
morphic being of the understanding, has no more 
significance for religion than a fundamental general 
principle has for a special science ; it is merely the 
ultimate point of support. — as it were, the mathema- 
tical point, of religion. The consciousness of human 
limitation or nothingness which is united with the idea 
of this being, is by no means a religious consciousness ; 
on the contrary, it characterizes sceptics, materialists, 
and pantheists. The belief in God — at least in the 
God of religion — is only lost where, as in scepticism, 
pantheism, and materialism, the belief in man is lost, 
at least in man such as he is presupposed in religion. 
As little then as religion has any influential belief in 
the nothingness of man* so little has it any influential 
belief in that abstract being with which the conscious- 
ness of this nothingness is united. The vital elements 
of religion arc those only which make man an object 
to man. To deny man, is to deny religion. 

It certainly is the interest of religion that its object 
should be distinct from man : but it is also, nay, yet 
more its interest, that this object should have human 
attributes. Thai he should be a distinct being concerns 
his existence only; but that lie should be human con- 
cern- his essence. If he be of a different nature, how 

* In religion, the representation or expression of the nothingness of 
man before God, u the anger of God ; for as the love of God is the af- 
firmation. ).' ation of man. Bu1 even this anger is not 
taken in earn* '■ God . . . is not really angry. II-- is oot thoroughly 
in earnest even irhen we think that he is angry, and punishes. w — Lu- 
ther (T- viii. p. 2 



GOD AS A MORAL BEING, OR LAW. 71 

can his existence or non-existence be of any importance 
to man ? How can he take so profound an interest in 
an existence in which his own nature has no partici- 
pation ? 

To give an example. ''When I believe that the 
human nature alone has suffered for me, Christ is a poor 
Saviour to me ; in that case, he needs a Saviour him- 
self." And thus, out of the need for salvation, is pos- 
tulated something transcending human nature, a being 
different from man. But no sooner is this being pos- 
tulated than there arises the yearning of man after 
himself, after his own nature, and man is immediately 
re-established. ''Here is God, who is not man and 
never yet became man. But this is not a God for 

me That would be a miserable Christ to me, who 

should be nothing but a purely separate God 

and divine person without humanity. No, my 

friend, where thou givest me God, thou must give me 
humanity too. 77 * 

In religion man seeks contentment ; religion is his 
highest good. But how could he find consolation and 
peace in God, if God were an essentially different being ? 
How can I share the peace of a being if I am not of the 
same nature with him ? If his nature is different from 
mine, his peace is essentially different, — it is no peace 
for me. How then can I become a partaker of his 
peace, if I am not a partaker of his nature ; but how 
can I be a partaker of his nature if I am really of a 
different nature ? Every being experiences peace only 
in its own element, only in the conditions of its own 
nature. Thus, if man feels peace in God, he feels it 
only because in God he first attains his true nature, 
because here, for the first time, he is with himself, be- 
cause everything in which he hitherto sought peace, and 
which he hitherto mistook for his nature, was alien to 
him. Hence, if man is to find contentment in God, he 
must find himself in God. " No one will taste of God, 

* Luther, Concordienbuch, Art. 8. Erklar. 



72 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

but as He vrilh, namely — in the humanity of Christ ; 
and if thou dost not find God thus, thou wilt never have 
rest. 7 '"* "Everything finds rest on the place in which 
it was born. The place where I was born is God. 
God is my father-land. Have I a father in God? Yes, 
I have not only a father, but I have myself in Him ; 
before I lived in myself I lived already in God."f 

A God, therefore, who expresses only the nature of 
the understanding, does not satisfy religion, is not the 
God of religion. The understanding is interested not 
only in man, but in the tilings out of man, in universal 
Nature. The intellectual man forgets even himself in 
the contemplation of Nature. The Christians scorned 
the pagan philosophers because, instead of thinking of 
themselves, of their own salvation, they had thought 
only of things out of themselves. The Christian thinks 
only of himself. By the understanding an insect is 
contemplated with as much enthusiasm as the image of 
God — man. The understanding: is the absolute indif- 
ference and identity of all tilings and beings. It is not 
Christianity, not religious enthusiasm, but the enthu- 
siasm of the understanding that we have to thank for 
botany, mineralogy, zoology, physics, and astronomy. 
The understanding is universal, pantheistic, the love of 
the universe ; but the grand characteristic of religion, 
and of the Christian religion especially, is, that it is 
thoroughly anthropothcistic, the exclusive love of man 
for himself, the exclusive self-affirmation of the human 
nature, that is, of subjective human nature ; for it is 
true that the understanding also affirms the nature of 
man, but it is his objective nature, which has reference 
to the object for the sake of the object, and the mani- 
festation of which is science. Hence it must be some- 
thing entirely different from the nature of the under- 

* Luther. (Saiiiintliclic Schriften and Werke. Leipzig, 1729, fol. T. 
iii. p. 589. It il according to this edition that references are given 
throughout the present work.) 

f Predigtcn etzlicher Lehrer vor und zu Tauleri Zeiten. Hamburg, 
1621, p. bl. 



GOD AS A MORAL BEING, OR LAW. 73 

standing which is an object to man in religion, if he is 
to find contentment therein, and this something will 
necessarily lie the very kernel of religion. 

Of all the attributes which the understanding assigns 
to God, that which in religion, and especially in the 
Christian religion, has the pre-eminence, is moral per- 
fection. But God as a morally perfect being is nothing 
else than the realized idea, the fulfilled law of morality, 
the moral nature of man posited as the absolute being ; 
man's own nature, for the moral God requires man to 
be as He himself is : Be ye holy for I am holy ; man's 
own conscience, for how could he otherwise tremble 
before the divine Being, accuse himself before him, and 
made him the judge of his inmost thoughts and feelings ? 

But the consciousness of the absolutely perfect moral 
nature, especially as an abstract being separate from 
man, leaves us cold and empty, because we feel the 
distance, the chasm between ourselves and this being ; 
— it is a dispiriting consciousness, for it is the con- 
sciousness of our personal nothingness, and of the kind 
which is the most acutely felt — moral nothingness. 
The consciousness of the divine omnipotence and eter- 
nity in opposition to my limitation in space and time 
does not afflict me : for omnipotence does not command 
me to be myself omnipotent, eternity, to be myself eter- 
nal. But I cannot have the idea of moral perfection 
without at the same time being conscious of it as a law 
for me. Moral perfection depends, at least for the 
moral consciousness, not on the nature, but on the will 
— it is a perfection of will, perfect will. I cannot con- 
ceive perfect will, the will which is in unison with law, 
which is itself law, without at the same time regarding 
it as an object of will, i.e., as an obligation for myself. 
The conception of the morally perfect being, is no 
merely theoretical, inert conception, but a practical 
one, calling me to action, to imitation, throwing me 
into strife, into disunion with myself; for while it 
proclaims to me what I ought to be, it also tells me to 
my face, without any flattery, what I am not. And 

P 



74 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

religion renders this disunion all the more painful.'- all 
the more terrible, that it sets man's own nature before 
him as a separate nature, and moreover as a personal 
being, who hates and curses sinners, and excludes them 
from his grace, the source of all salvation and hap- 
piness. 

Now, by what means does man deliver himself from 
this state of disunion between himself and the perfect 
being, from the painful consciousness of sin, from the 
distressing sense of his own nothingness ? How does 
he blunt the fatal sting of sin ? Only by this ; that he 
is conscious of love as the highest, the absolute power 
and truth, that he regards the Divine Being not only 
as a law, as a moral being, as a being of the understan- 
ding ; but also as a loving, tender, even subjective hu- 
man being (that is, as having sympathy with indi- 
vidual man.) 

The understanding judges only according to the 
stringency of law ; the heart accommodates itself, is 
considerate, lenient, relenting, x«*' a v dpu>rov. Xo man is 
sufficient for the law which moral perfection sets be- 
fore us ; but for that reason, neither is the law suffi- 
cient for man, for the heart. The law condemns ; the 
heart has compassion even on the sinner. The law 
affirms me only as an abstract being. — love, as a real 
being. Love gives me the consciousness that I am a 
man ; the law only the consciousness that I am a sin- 
ner, that I am worthless. t The law holds man in 
bondage ; love makes him free. 

Love is the middle term, the substantial bond, the 
principle of reconciliation between the perfect and the 
imperfect, the sinless and sinful being, the universal 

* "That which, in our own judgment, derogates from bnr self-conceit. 

Lumiliut' - n& Tims the mora] law inevitably humiliates every man, 

when : with it the sensual tendency of his nature. — Kant, 

Kritik der prakt. Vernunft. Fourth edition, p. 182. 

f Omnes peccavimus Parricid* cum lege caeperunt et illis 

facinus poena monstravit. — Seneca. M The law destroys us." — Luther, 
(Th. xvi. a 



GOD AS A MORAL BEING, OR LAW. 75 

and the individual, the divine and the human. Love 
is God himself, and apart from it there is no God. 
Love makes man God, and God man. Love strength- 
ens the weak, and weakens the strong, abases the high 
and raises the lowly, idealizes matter and materializes 
spirit. Love is the true unity of God and man, of 
spirit and nature. In love common nature is spirit, 
and the pre-eminent spirit is nature. Love is to deny 
spirit from the point of view of spirit, to deny matter 
from the point of view of matter. Love is materialism ; 
immaterial love is a chimaera. In the longing of love 
after the distant object, the abstract idealist involunta- 
rily confirms the truth of sensuousness. But love is 
also the idealism of nature, love is also spirit, esprit. 
Love alone makes the nightingale a songstress ; love 
alone gives the plant its corolla. And what wonders 
does not love work in our social life ! What faith, 
creed, opinion separates, love unites. Love even, hu- 
morously enough, identifies the high noblesse with the 
people. What the old mystics said of God, that he is 
the highest and yet the commonest being, applies in 
truth to love, and that not a visionary, imaginary love 
— no ! a "real love, a love which has flesh and blood, 
which vibrates as an almighty force through all 
living. 

Yes, it applies only to the love which has flesh and 
blood, for only this can absolve from the sins which 
flesh and blood commit. A merely moral being cannot 
forgive what is contrary to the law of morality. That 
which denies the law, is denied by the law. The moral 
judge, who does not infuse human blood into his judg- 
ment, judges the sinner relentlessly, inexorably. Since, 
then, God is regarded as a sin-pardoning being, he is 
posited, not indeed as an unmoral, but as more than a 
moral being — in a word, as a human being. The ne- 
gation or annulling of sin is the negation of abstract 
moral rectitude,- — the positing of love, mercy, sensuous 
life. Not abstract beings — no ! only sensuous, living 
oeings, are merciful. Mercy is the justice of sensuous 
d2 



76 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

life* Hence, God does not forgive the sins of men as 
the abstract God of the understanding, but as man, as 
the God made flesh, the visible God. God as man sins 
not, it is true, but he knows, he takes on himself, the 
sufferings, the wants, the needs of sensuous beings. 
The blood of Christ cleanses us from our sins in the 
eyes of God ; it is only his human blood that makes 
God merciful, allays his anger ; that is, our sins are 
forgiven us, because we are no abstract beings, but 
creatures of flesh and blood.f 

* " Das Rechtsgefuhl der Sinnlichkeit." 

f " This, my God and Lord, has taken upon him my nature, flesh 
and "blood such as I have, and has been tempted and has suffered in aU 
things like me, but without sin ; therefore he can have pity on my 
weakness. — Hebrews v. Luther (Th. xvi. s. 533.) " The deeper we can 
bring Christ into the flesh the better." — (Ibid. s. 565.) " God himself, 
when he is dealt with out of Christ, is a terrible God, for no consolation 
is found in him, but pure anger and disfavour." — (Th. xv. s. 298.) 



THE MYSTERY OP THE INCARNATION. 77 



CHAPTEE IV. 

THE MYSTEEY OF THE INCARNATION, OR GOD AS 
LOVE, AS A BEING OF THE HEART. 

It is the consciousness of love by which man reconciles 
himself with God, or rather with his own nature as 
represented in the moral law. The consciousness of 
the divine love, or what is the same thing, the contem- 
plation of God as human, is the mystery of the Incar- 
nation. The Incarnation is nothing else than the 
practical, material manifestation of the human nature 
of God. God did not become man for his own sake ; 
the need, the want of man — a want which still exists 
in the religious sentiment — was the cause of the Incar- 
nation. God became man out of mercy : thus he was 
in himself already a human God before he became an 
actual man ; for humai want, human misery, went to 
his heart. The Incarnation was a tear of the divine 
compassion, and hence it was only the visible advent 
of a Being having human feelings, and therefore essen- 
tially human. 

If in the Incarnation we stop short at the fact of 
God becoming man, it certainly appears a surprising, 
inexplicable, marvellous event. But the incarnate God 
is only the apparent manifestation of deified man ; for 
the descent of God to man is necessarily preceded by 
the exaltation of man to God. Man was already in 
God, was already God himself, before God became 
man, L e., showed himself as man.* How otherwise 

* u Such descriptions as those in which the Scriptures speak of God 
as of a man, and ascribe to him all that is human, are very sweet and 
comforting — namely, that he talks with us as a friend, and of such things 



78 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

could God have become man? The old maxim, exni- 
kilo, nihil ft, is applicable here also. A king who has 
not the welfare of his subjects at heart, who while 
seated on his throne does not mentally live with them 
in their dwellings, who, in feeling, is not, as the peo- 
ple say, " a common man,"' such a king will not de- 
scend bodily from his throne to make his people happy 
by his personal presence. Thus, has not the subject 
risen to be a king, before the king descends to be a 
subject? And if the subject feels himself honoured 
and made happy by the personal presence of his king, 
does this feeling refer merely to the bodily presence, 
and not rather to the manifestation of the disposition, 
of the philanthropic nature which is the cause of the 
appearance? But that which in the truth of religion 
is the cause, takes in the consciousness of religion the 
form of a consequence : and so here the raising of man 
to God is made a consequence of the humiliation or 
descent of God to man. God, says religion, made 
himself human that he might make man divine.* 

That which is mysterious and incomprehensible, i.e., 
contradictory, in the proposition, " God is or becomes 
a man," arises only from the mingling or confusion of 
the idea or definitions of the universal, unlimited, me- 
taphysical being with the idea of the religious God, 
i. e., the conditions of the understanding with the con- 
ditions of the heart, the emotive nature ; a confusion 
which is the greatest hindrance to the correct know- 
ledge of religion. But in fact the idea of the Incar- 
nation is nothing more than the human form of a God, 

as men are wont to talk of with each other, and he rejoices, sorrows, and 
suffers, like a man. for the sake of the mystery of the future humanity of 
Christ," — Luther (T. ii. p. 834). 

* " Dens homo facta* est, at homo Dens Beret." — A-ugustinus (Serm. 

ad Pop. ]». 871, o. 1 •. [ii Luther, however, (T. i. p. iJ.'J 4 ,) there is a 
■ which indicates the true relation. When .Moses called man 
"the image of God, the Likeness of God," he mf-ant, says Luther, ob- 
scurely to intimate that " ■ to become man." Thus here the in- 
carnation of God is (dearly enough represented as a consequence of the 
deification of man. 



THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION. 79 

who already in his nature, in the profoundest depths 
of his soul, is a merciful and therefore a human 
God. 

The form given to this truth in the doctrine of the 
church is, that it was not the first person of the God- 
head who was incarnate, but the second, who is the 
representative of man in and before God ; the second 
person being however in reality, as will be shown, the 
sole, true, first person in religion. And it is only 
apart from this distinction of persons, that the God- 
man appears mysterious, incomprehensible, " specula- 
tive f for, considered in connexion with it, the Incar- 
nation is a necessary, nay, a self-evident consequence. 
The allegation, therefore, that the Incarnation is a 
purely empirical fact, which could be made known 
only by means of a revelation in the theological sense, 
betrays the most crass religious materialism ; for the 
Incarnation is a conclusion which rests on a very com- 
prehensible premiss. But it is equally perverse to 
attempt to deduce the Incarnation from purely specu- 
lative, i.e., metaphysical, abstract grounds; for meta- 
physics apply only to the first person of the Godhead, 
who does not become incarnate, who isnot a dramatic 
person. Such a deduction would at the utmost be jus- 
tifiable if it were meant consciously to deduce from 
metaphysics the negation of metaphysics. 

This example clearly exhibits the distinction be- 
tween the method of our philosophy, and that of the 
old speculative philosophy. The former does not 
philosophize concerning the Incarnation as a peculiar, 
stupendous mystery, after the manner of speculation 
dazzled by mystical splendour ; on the contrary it 
destroys the illusive supposition of a peculiar super- 
natural mystery ; it criticises the dogma and reduces 
it to its natural elements, immanent in man, to its 
originating principle and central point — love. 

The dogma presents to us two things — God and 
love. God is love : but what does that mean ? Is God 
something besides love? a being distinct from love? 



80 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Is it as if I said of an affectionate human being, he is 
love itself? Certainly; otherwise I must give up the 
name God, which expresses a special personal being, 
a subject in distinction from the predicate. Thus love 
is made something apart : God out of love sent his 
only-begotten Son. Here love recedes and sinks into 
insignificance in the dark background — God. It be- 
comes merely a personal, though an essential, attribute; 
hence it receives both in theory and in feeling, both 
objectively and subjectively, the rank simply of a 
predicate, not that of a subject, of the substance ; it 
shrinks out of observation as a collateral, an accident ; 
at one moment it presents itself to me as something 
essential, at another, it vanishes again. God appears 
to me in another form besides that of love ; in the form 
of omnipotence, of a severe power not bound by love, 
a power in which, though in a smaller degree, the 
devils participate. 

So long as love is not exalted into a substance, into 
an essence, so long there lurks in the background of 
love a subject, who even without love is something by 
himself, an unloving monster, a diabolical being, whose 
personality separable and actually separated from love, 
delights in the blood of heretics and unbelievers, — the 
phantom of religious fanaticism. Nevertheless the 
essential idea of the Incarnation, though enveloped in 
the night of the religious consciousness, is love. Love 
determined God to the renunciation of his divinity.* 
Not because of his Godhead as such, according to which 
he is the subject in the proposition — God is love, but 

* It wus iii this sense that the old uncompromising enthusiastic faith 
celebrated the Incarnation. Amor trinmphat de Deo, Bays St. Bernard. 
And only in the sense of a real self-renunciation, self-negation of the God- 
head, lies the reality, the vis of the Incarnation; although this self-nega- 
tion U in itself merely a conception oi the imagination, for, looked at in 
broad daylight, God does not negative himself in the Incarnation, bnt he 
shews himself as that which he is, as n human being. The fabrications 
which modern rationalistic orthodoxy and pietistic rationalism have ad- 
vanced concerning the [ncarnatjon, in opposition to the raptnrons concep- 
tions and expressions of ancient faith, do not doserve to he mentioned^ 
still less controverted. 



THE MYSTERY OP THE INCARNATION. 81 

because of his love, of the predicate, is it that he re- 
nounced his Godhead ; thus love is a higher power and 
truth than Deity* Love conquers God. It was love 
to which God sacrificed his divine majesty. And what 
sort of love was that ? another than ours ? than that to 
which we sacrifice life and fortune ? Was it the love 
of himself? of himself as God? No! it was love to 
man. But is not love to man human love? Can I 
love man without loving him humanly, without loving 
him as he himself loves, if he truly loves? Would not 
love be otherwise a devilish love ? The devil too loves 
man, but not for man's sake — for his own ; thus he 
loves man out of egotism, to aggrandize himself, to 
extend his power. But God loves man for man's sake, 
L e., that he may make him good, happy, blessed. Does 
he not then love man, as the true man loves his fellow? 
Has love a plural ? Is it not everywhere like itself? 
What then is the true unfalsified import of the Incar- 
nation, but absolute, pure love, without adjunct, with- 
out a distinction between divine and human love? 
For though there is also a self-interested love among 
men, still the true human love, which is alone worthy 
of this name, is that which impels the sacrifice of self 
to another. Who then is our Saviour and Redeemer? 
God or Love ? Love ; for God as God has not saved 
us, but Love, which transcends the difference between 
the divine and human personality. As God has re- 
nounced himself out of love, so we, out of love, should 
renounce God ; for if we do not sacrifice God to love, 
we sacrifice love to God, and, in spite of the predicate 
of love, we have the God — the evil being — of religious 
fanaticism. 

While, however, we have laid open this nucleus of 
truth in the Incarnation, we have at the same time ex- 
hibited the dogma in its falsity, we have reduced the 
apparently supernatural and super-rational mystery to 
a simple truth inherent in human nature : — a truth 
which does not belong to the Christian religion alone, 
but which, implicitly at least, belongs more or less to 

d3 



82 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

every religion as such. For every religion which has 
any claim to the name, presupposes that God is not 
indifferent to the beings who worship him, that there- 
fore what is human is not alien to him, that, as an ob- 
ject of human veneration, he is a human God. Every 
prayer discloses the secret of the Incarnation, every 
prayer is in fact an incarnation of God. In prayer I 
involve God in human distress, I make him a particip- 
ator in my sorrows and wants. God is not deaf to 
my complaints ; he has compassion on me ; hence he 
renounces his divine majesty, his exaltion above all 
that is finite and human ; he becomes a man with man ; 
for if he listens to me, and pities me, he is affected by 
my sufferings. God loves man — i. e., God suffers from 
man. Love does not exist without sympathy, sym- 
pathy does not exist without suffering in common. 
Havel any sympathy for a being without feeling? 
No ! I feel only for that which has feeling — only for 
that which partakes of my nature, for that in which I 
feel myself, whose sufferings I myself suffer. Sympathy 
presupposes a like nature. The Incarnation Provi- 
dence, prayer, are the expression of this identity of 
jiature in God and man.' :: " 

It is true that theology, which is pre-occupied with 
the metaphysical attributes of eternity, unconditioned- 
ness, unchangeableness, and the like abstractions, 
which express the nature of the understanding, — theo- 
logy denies the possibility that God should suffer, but 
in so doing it denies the truth of religion,t For re- 

* " Xos scimus affici Peum misericordia nostri et non solum respicere 
. t- nostras, Bed etiam aumerare stillulas, sicut seriptum in P&almo 
LVL Filius Dei vere afficitur sensu miseriarom nostrarum." — Melanc- 
thonis et aliorum (Declam. T. ill p. 28G, p. 450). 

| St Bernard resorts to a charmingly sophistical play of words: — 
ll Impa*nb&i* est Dens, Bed non mcompassibilis, cni proprimn est misereri 
semper <-t pareere." — (Sop, Cant. Senna 26.) As if compassion were not 
suffering — the suffering of love, it La trne, the suffering of the heart But 
what does suffer, if not thy sympathising heart? No love, no suffering. 
The material, the source of suffering, is the universal heart, the common 
bond of all beings. 



THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION. 83 

ligion — the religious man in the act«of devotion, be- 
lieves in a real sympathy of the divine being in his 
sufferings and wants, believes that the will of God can 
be determined by the fervour of prayer, i. e., by the 
force of feeling, believes in a real, present fulfilment 
of his desire, wrought by prayer. The truly religious 
man unhesitatingly assigns his own feelings to God ; 
God is to him a heart susceptible to all that is human. 
The heart can betake itself only to the heart ; feeling 
can appeal only to feeling ; it finds consolation in it- 
self, in its own nature alone. 

The notion that the fulfilment of prayer has been 
determined from eternity, that it was originally in- 
cluded in the plan of creation, is the empty, absurd 
fiction of a mechanical mode of thought, which is in 
absolute contradiction with the nature of religion. 
u We need," says Lavater somewhere, and quite cor- 
rectly according to the religious sentiment, " an arbi- 
trary God." Besides, even according to this fiction, 
God is just as much a being determined by man, as in 
the real, present fulfilment consequent on the power 
of prayer ; the only difference is, that the contradic- 
tion with the unchangeableness and unconditioned- 
ness of God — that which constitutes the difficulty — is 
thrown back into the deceptive distance of the past or 
of eternity. Whether God decides on the fulfilment 
of my prayer now, on the immediate occasion of my 
offering it, or whether he did decide on it long ago, 
is fundamentally the same thing. 

It is the greatest inconsequence to reject the idea of 
a God who can be determined by prayer, that is, by 
the force of feeling, as an unworthy anthropomorphic 
idea. If we once believe in a being who is an object 
of veneration, an object of prayer, an object of affec- 
tion, who is providential, who takes care of man, — in 
a Providence, which is not conceivable without love, 
— in a being, therefore, who is loving, whose motive 
of action is love ; we also believe in a being, who has, 
if not an anatomical, yet a psychical human heart. 



84 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

The religious mind, as has been said, places everything 
in God, excepting that alone which it despises. The 
Christians certainly gave their God no attributes 
which contradicted their own moral ideas, but they 
gave him without hesitation, and of necessity, the 
emotions of love, of compassion. And the love which 
the religious mind places in God is not an illusory, 
imaginary love, but a real, true love. God is loved 
and loves again ; the divine love is only human love 
made objective, affirming itself. In God love is ab- 
sorbed in itself as its own ultimate truth. 

It may be objected to the import here assigned to 
the Incarnation, that the Christian Incarnation is alto- 
gether peculiar, that at least it is different (which is 
quite true in certain respects, as will hereafter be ap- 
parent) from the incarnations of the heathen deities, 
whether Greek or Indian. These latter are mere 
products of men or deified men ; but in Christianity 
is given the idea of the true God ; here the union of 
the divine nature with the human is first significant 
and ;> speculative." Jupiter transforms himself into 
a bull ; the heathen incarnations are mere fancies. In 
paganism there' is no more in the nature of God than 
in his incarnate manifestation : in Christianity, on 
the contrary, it is God, a separate, superhuman being, 
who appears as man. But this objection is refuted 
by the remark already made, that even the premiss of 
the Christian Incarnation contains the human nature. 
God loves man : moreover God has a Son ; God is a 
father ; the relations of humanity are not excluded 
from God; the human is not remote from God, not 
unknown to him. Thus here also there is nothing 
more in the nature of God than in the incarnate mani- 
festation of God. In the Incarnation religion only 
confesses, what in reflection on itself, as theology, it 
will not admit; namely, thai God is an altogether 
human being. The (ncarnation, the mystery of the 
" Gfodman," is therefore no mysterious composition of 
contraries, no synthetic fact, as it is regarded by the 



THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION. 85 

speculative religious philosophy, which has a particu- 
lar delight in contradiction ; it is an analytic fact, — a 
human word with a human meaning. If there be a 
contradiction here, it lies before the incarnation and 
out of it ; in the union of providence, of love, with 
deity ; for if this love is a real love, it is not essen- 
tially different from our love, — there are only our 
limitations to be abstracted from it ; and thus the In- 
carnation is only the strongest, deepest, most palpable, 
open-hearted expression of this providence, this love. 
Love knows not how to make its object happier than 
by rejoicing it with its personal presence, by letting 
itself be seen. To see the invisible benefactor face to 
face is the most ardent desire of love. To see is a 
divine act. Happiness lies in the mere sight of the 
beloved one. The glance is the certainty of love. And 
the Incarnation has no other significance, no other 
effect, than the indubitable certitude of the love of 
God to man. Love remains, but the incarnation upon 
the earth passes away: the appearance was limited by 
time and place, accessible to few ; but the essence, the 
nature which was manifested, is eternal and univer- 
sal. We can no longer believe in the manifestation 
for its own sake, but only for the sake of the thing 
manifested ; for us there remains no immediate pre- 
sence but that of love. 

The clearest, most irrefragable proof, that man in 
religion contemplates himself as the object of the 
divine Being, as the end of the divine activity, that 
thus in religion he has relation only to his own nature, 
only to himself, — the clearest, most irrefragable proof 
of this is the love of God to man, the basis and central 
point of religion. God for the sake of man empties 
himself of his Godhead, lays aside his Godhead. Herein 
lies the elevating influence of the Incarnation ; the 
highest, the perfect being humiliates, lowers himself 
for the sake of man. Hence, in God I learn to esti- 
mate my own nature ; I have value in the sight of 
God ; the divine significance of my nature is become 



86 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

evident to me. How can the worth of man be more 
strongly expressed than when God, for man's sake, 
becomes a man. when man is the end, the object of the 
divine love ? The love of God to man is an essential 
condition of the divine Being : God is a God who loves 
me — who loves man in general. Here lies the em- 
phasis, the fundamental feeling of religion. The love 
of God makes me loving ; the love of God to man is 
the cause of man's love to God : the divine love causes, 
awakens human love. " We love God because he 
first loved us." "What, then, is it that I love in God? 
Love : love to man. But when I love and worship 
the love with which God loves man, do I not love 
man : is not my love of God, though indirectly, love 
of man? If God loves man, is not man, then, the 
very substance of God? That which I love — is it not 
my immost being? Have I a heart when I do not 
love? Xo ! love only is the heart of man. But what 
is love without the thing loved ? Thus what I love 
is my heart, the substance of my being, my nature. 
Why does man grieve — why does he lose pleasure in 
life, when he has lost the beloved object ? Why? be- 
cause with the beloved object lie has lost his heart, the 
activity of his affections, the principle of life. Thus, 
if God loves man, man is the heart of God — : the wel- 
fare of man his deepest anxiety. If man. then, is the 
object of God, is not man, in God, an object to him- 
self? is not the content of the divine nature the human 
nature? If God is love, is not the essential content 
of this love, man ? Is not the love of God to man — 
the basis and central point of religion — the love of 
man to himself made an object, contemplated as the 
highest objective truth, as the highest Being to man? 
[g not then the proposition, " God loves man 7 ' an orien- 
talism (religion is essentially oriental), which in plain 
speech means, the highest is the love of man? 

The truth to which, by means of analysis, we have 
here reduced the mystery of the Incarnation, has also 
been recognised even in the religious consciousness. 



THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION. 87 

Thus Luther, for example, says. " He who can truly 
conceive such a thing (namely, the incarnation of God) 
in his heart, should, for the sake of the flesh and blood 
which sits at the right hand of God, bear love to all 
flesh and blood here upon the earth, and never more 
be able to be angry with any man. The gentle man- 
hood of Christ our God, should at a glance fill all 
hearts with joy, so that never more could an angry, 
unfriendly thought come therein — yea, every man 
ought, out of great joy, to be tender to his fellow-man, 
for the sake of that our flesh and blood." "This is a 
fact which should move us to great joy and blissful 
hope, that we are thus honoured above all creatures, 
even above the angels, so that we can with truth boast, 
■ — my own flesh and blood sits at the right hand of 
God, and reigns over all. Such honour has no creature, 
not even an angel. This ought to be a furnace that 
should melt us all into one heart, and should create 
such a fervour in us men that we should heartily love 
each other." But that which in the truth of religion 
is the essence of the fable, the chief thing, is to the 
religious consciousness only the moral of the fable, a 
collateral thing. 



88 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE MYSTERY OF THE SUFFERING GOD. 

An essential condition of the incarnate, or, what is 
the same thing, the human God, namely, Christ, is the 
Passion. Love attests itself by suffering. All thoughts 
and feelings which are immediately associated with 
Christ, concentrate themselves in the idea of the 
Passion. God as God is the sum of all human perfec- 
tion ; God as Christ is the sum of all human misery. 
The heathen philosophers celebrated activity, espe- 
cially the spontaneous activity of the intelligence, as 
the highest, the divine; the Christians consecrated 
passivity, even placing it in God. If God as actus 
purus, as pure activity, is the God of abstract philo- 
sophy ; so, on the other hand, Christ, the God of the 
Christians, is the passtopurcC, pure suffering — the high- 
est metaphysical thought, the etre supreme . of the heart. 
For what makes more impression on the heart than 
suffering? especially the suffering of one who consi- 
dered in himself is free from suffering, exalted above 
it; — the suffering of the innocent, endured purely for 
the good of others, the suffering of love, — self-sacrifice ? 
But for the very reason that the history of the Passion 
is the history which most deeply affects the human 
heart, or let as rather say the heart, in general — for 
it would be a ludicrous mistake in man to attempt to 
conceive any other heart than the human, — it follows 
undeniably that nothing else is expressed in that 
history, nothing else is made an object in it, but the 
nature of the heart, — that it is not an invention of the 
understanding or the poetic faculty, but of the heart. 
The heart, however, does not invent in the same way 
B8 the free imagination or intelligence ; it has a passive, 



THE MYSTERY OF THE SUFFERING GOD. 89 

receptive relation to what it produces ; all that pro- 
ceeds from it seems to it given from without, takes it 
by violence, works with the force of irresistible ne- 
cessity. The heart overcomes, masters man ; he who 
is once in its power is possessed as it were by his demon, 
by his God. The heart knows no other God, no more 
excellent being than itself, than a God whose name 
may indeed be another, but whose nature, whose sub- 
stance, is the nature of the heart. And out of the heart, 
out of the inward impulse to do good, to live and die 
for man, out of the divine instinct of benevolence which 
desires to make all happy, and excludes none, not even 
the most abandoned and abject, out of the moral duty 
of benevolence in the highest sense, as having become 
an inward necessity, i. e., a movement of the heart,' — 
out of the human nature, therefore, as it reveals itself 
through the heart, has sprung what is best, what is 
true in Christianity — its essence purified from theo- 
logical dogmas and contradictions. 

For, according to the principles which we have 
already developed, that which in religion is the pre- 
dicate, we must make the subject, and that which in 
religion is a subject we must make a predicate, thus 
inverting the oracles of religion ; and by this means 
we arrive at the truth. God suffers — suffering is the 
predicate — but for men, for others, not for himself. 
What does that mean in plain speech? nothing else 
than this : to suffer for others is divine ; he who suffers 
for others, who lays down his life for them, acts di- 
vinely, is a God to men.* 

The passion of Christ, however, represents not only 

* Religion speaks by example. Example is the law of religion. What 
Christ did, is law. Christ suffered for others ; therefore, we should do 
likewise. " Quae necessitas fuit ut sic exinaniret se, sic humiliaret se, sic 
abbreviaret se Dominus majestatis ; nisi ut vos similiter faciatis ?" — 
Bernardus (in Die nat. Domini). "We ought studiously to consider 

the example of Christ That would move us and incite us, so 

that we from our hearts should willingly help and serve other people, even 
though it might be hard, and we must suffer on account of it." — Luther 
(T. xv p. 40). 



90 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

moral, voluntary suffering, the suffering of love, the 
power of sacrificing self for the good of others ; it re- 
presents also suffering as such, suffering in so far as 
it is an expression of passibility in general. The 
Christian religion is so little superhuman, that it even 
sanctions human weakness. The heathen philosopher, 
on hearing tidings of the death of his child, exclaims : 
" I knew that he was mortal. 77 Christ, on the contrary, 
— at least in the Bible, — sheds tears over the death of 
Lazarus, a death which he nevertheless knew to be 
only an apparent one. While Socrates empties the 
cup of poison with unshaken soul, Christ exclaims : 
"If it be possible, let this cup pass from me."* Christ 
is in this respect the self-confession of human sensi- 
bility. In opposition to the heathen, and in particular 
the stoical principle, with its rigorous energy of will 
and self-sustainedness, the Christian involves the con- 
sciousness of his own sensitiveness and susceptibility in 
the consciousness of God ; he finds it, if only it be no 
sinful weakness, not denied, not condemned in God. 

To suffer is the highest command of Christianity — 
the history of Christianity is the history of the Passion 
of Humanity. While amongst the heathens the shout 
of sensual pleasure mingled itself in the worship of 
the gods, amongst the Christians, we mean of course 
the ancient Christians, God is served with sighs and 
tears. t But as where sounds of sensual pleasure make 
a part of the cultus, it is a sensual God, a God of life, 
who is worshipped, as indeed these shouts of joy are 
only a symbolical definition of the nature of the gods 
to whom this jubilation is acceptable ; so also the sighs 
of Christians are tones which proceed from the inmost 

* M Hjerent plerique hoc loco. K<_n> autem non solum cxcusandum non 
puto, Bed etiam unsgnam magis pietatem ejus nnijestatemque demiror. 
Minna enim contuleral mini, nisi menm Buscepissel affectum. Ergo pro 
UK- doluit, qui pro Be nihil habuit, quod doleret." — Ambrosius (Exposit. 
in Lacs Ev. 1. x. c. 22 >. 

f "Qnando enim iili (Deo) appropinqnare auderemus in sua, impassi- 
bilitate manenti?" — Bexnardnj (Tract, de xii. GracL HumiL et Superb. 



THE MYSTERY OF THE SUFFERING GOD. 91 

soul, the inmost nature of their God. The God ex- 
pressed by the cultus, whether this be an external, or, 
as with the Christians, an inward spiritual worship, — 
not the God of sophistical theology, — is the true God 
of man. But the Christians, we mean of course the 
ancient Christians, believed that they rendered the 
highest honour to their God by tears, the tears of re- 
pentance and yearning. Thus tears are the light-re- 
flecting drops which mirror the nature of the Christ- 
ian's God. But a God who has pleasure in tears, ex- 
presses nothing else than the nature of the heart. It 
is true that the theory of the Christian religion says : 
Christ has done all for us, has redeemed us, has recon- 
ciled us with God ; and from hence the inference may 
be drawn : Let us be of a joyful mind and disposition ; 
what need have we to trouble ourselves as to how we 
shall reconcile ourselves with God? we are reconciled 
already. But the imperfect tense in which the fact of 
suffering is expressed, makes a deeper, a more endur- 
ing impression, than the perfect tense which expresses 
the fact of redemption. The redemtion is only the 
result of the suffering ; the suffering is the cause of 
the redemption. Hence the suffering takes deeper 
root in the feelings ; the suffering makes itself an ob- 
ject of imitation ; — not so the redemption. If God 
himself suffered for my sake, how can I be joyful, how 
can I allow myself any gladness, at least on this cor- 
rupt earth, which was the theatre of his suffering ?* 
Ought I to fare better than God ? Ought I not, then, 
to make his sufferings my own? Is not what God my 
Lord does, my model ? Or shall I share only the gain, 
and not the cost also ? Do I know merely that he has 
redeemed me ? Do I not also know the history of his 
suffering? Should it be an object of cold remem- 
brance to me, or even an object of rejoicing, because 
it has purchased my salvation? Who can think so — 

* "Deus mens penclet in patibulo et ego voluptati operam dabo?" (Form. 
Hon. Vitse. Among the spurious writings of St. Bernard.) "Memoria cm- 
cifixi crucifigat in te camera tuam." — Joh. Gerhard (Medit. sacrae, M. 37). 



92 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

who can wish to be exempt from the sufferings of his 
God? 

The Christian religion is the religion of suffering.* 
The images of the crucified one which we still meet 
with in all churches, represent not the Saviour, but 
only the crucified, the suffering Christ. Even the 
self-crucifixions among the Christians are, psycholo- 
gically, a deep-rooted consequence of their religious 
views. How should not he who has always the image 
of the crucified one in his mind, at length contract the 
desire to crucify either himself or another? At least 
we have as good a warrant for this conclusion as 
Augustine and other fathers of the church for their 
reproach against the heathen religion, that the licen- 
tious religious images of the heathens provoked and 
authorized licentiousness. 

God suffers, means in truth nothing else than : God 
is a heart. The heart is the source, the centre of all 
suffering. A being without suffering is a being with- 
out a heart. The mystery of the suffering God is 
therefore the mystery of feeling, sensibility. A suffer- 
ing God is a feeling, sensitive God.f But the propo- 
sition : God is a feeling Being, is only the religious 
peripiirase of the proposition: feeling is absolute, di- 
vine in its nature. 

Man has the consciousness not only of a spring of 
activity, but also of a spring of suffering in himself. 
I feel ; and I feel feeling (not merely will and thought, 
which are only too often in opposition to me and my 
feelings), as belonging to my essential being, and, 
though the source of all sufferings and sorrows, as a 
glorious, divine power and perfection. What would 
man be without feeling ? J t is the musical power in 
man. 1 >u t what would man be without music ? Just as 
man has a musical faculty and feels an inward necessi- 

* "It u better to suffer evil, than to do good." — Luther (T. iv. s. 1.").) 
f " I'ati voluit, at compati dieceret, miser fieri, at miserexi disceret." — 
Bernhard (de (Jrad.) lk Miserere nostri, quoniam caruis imbecillitatem, 
to. ipse earn passus, expertus es." — Heme Alex, Psedag. 1. i. c. s. 



THE MYSTERY OF THE SUFFERING GOD. 93 

ty to breathe out his feelings in song ; so, by a like ne- 
cessity, lie in religious sighs and tears, streams forth 
the nature of feeling as an objective, divine nature. 

Religion is human nature reflected, mirrored in it- 
self. That which exists has necessarily a pleasure, a 
joy in itself, loves itself, and loves itself justly ; to 
blame it because it loves itself is to reproach it be- 
cause it exists. To exist is to assert oneself, to affirm 
oneself, to love oneself ; he to whom life is a burthen, 
rids himself of it. Where, therefore, feeling is not 
depreciated and repressed, as with the Stoics, where 
existence is awarded to it, there also is religious power 
and significance already conceded to it, there also is 
it already exalted to that stage in which it can mirror 
and reflect itself, in which it can project its own image 
as God. God is the mirror of man. 

That which has essential value for man, which he 
esteems the perfect, the excellent, in which he has true 
delight, — that alone is God to him. If feeling seems 
to thee a glorious attribute, it is then, per se, a divine 
attribute to thee. Therefore, the feeling, sensitive 
man believes only in a feeling, sensitive God, i. e., he 
believes only in the truth of his own existence and 
nature, for he can believe in nothing else than that 
which is involved in his own nature. His faith is the 
consciousness of that which is holy to him ; but that 
alone is holy to man which lies deepest within him, 
which is most peculiarly his own, the basis, the essence 
of his individuality. To the feeling man a God with- 
out feeling is an empty, abstract, negative God, i. e., 
nothing ; because that is wanting to him which is pre- 
cious and sacred to man. God is for man the com- 
mon-place book where he registers his highest feelings 
and thoughts, the genealogical tree on which are enter- 
ed the names that are dearest and most sacred to him. 
It is a sign of an undiscriminating good nature, a 
womanish instinct, to gather together and then to pre- 
serve tenaciously all that we have gathered, not to trust 
anything to the waves of forgetfulness, to the chance of 



94 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

memory, in short not to trust ourselves and learn to 
know what really has value for us. The freethinker 
is liable to the danger of an unregulated, dissolute 
life. The religious man, who binds together all things 
in one, does not lose himself in sensuality ; but for 
that reason he is exposed to the danger of illiberality, 
of spiritual selfishness and greed. Therefore, to the 
religious man at least, the irreligious or un-religious 
man appears lawless, arbitrary, haughty, frivolous ; 
not because that which is sacred to the former is not 
also in itself sacred to the latter, but only because 
that which the un-religious man holds in his head 
merely, the religious man places out of and above 
himself as an object, and hence recognises in himself 
the relation of a formal subordination. The religious 
man, having a common-place book, a nucleus of aggra- 
gation, has an aim, and having an aim he has firm 
standing-ground. Not mere will as such, not vague 
knowledge — only activity with a purpose, which is 
the union of theoretic and practical activity, gives 
man a moral basis and support, i. e., character. Every 
man, therefore, must place before himself a God, i. e., 
an aim, a purpose. The aim is the conscious, voluntary, 
essential impulse of life, the glance of genius, the focus 
of self-knowledge, — the unity of the material and spi- 
ritual in the individual man. He who has an aim, has 
a law over him : he does not merely guide himself; 
he is guided. He who has no aim. has no home, no 
sanctuary ; aimlessness is the greatest unhappiness. 
Even he who lias only common aims, gets on better, 
though lie may not be better, than he who has no aim. 
An aim Betfi limits; but limits are the mentors of vir- 
tue. He who has an aim, an aim which is in itself 
true oiid essential, has, eo ipso, a religion, if not in 
the narrow sense of common pietism, yet — and this is 
the only point to be considered — in the sense of rea- 
son, in the sense of the universal, the only true love. 



THE MYSTEEY OP THE TRINITY. 95 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY AND THE 
MOTHER OF GOD. 



If a God without feeling, without a capability of suf- 
fering, will not suffice to man as a feeling, suffering 
being, neither will a God with feeling only, a God 
without intelligence and will. Only a being who 
comprises in himself the whole man can satisfy the 
whole man. Man's consciousness of himself in his to- 
tality is the consciousness of the Trinity. The Tri- 
nity knits together the qualities or powers, which 
were before regarded separately, into unity, and 
thereby reduces the universal being of the under- 
standing, i. e., God as God, to a special being, a spe- 
cial faculty. 

That which theology designates as the image, the 
similitude of the Trinity, we must take as the thing 
itself, the essence, the archetype, the original ; by this 
means we shall solve the enigma. The so-called 
images by which it has been sought to illustrate the 
Trinity, and make it comprehensible, are, principally: 
mind, understanding, memory, will, love — mens, Intel- 
lectus, memoria, voluntas, amor or caritas. 

God thinks, God loves ; and, moreover, he thinks, 
he loves himself; the object thought, known, loved, is 
God himself. The objectivity of self-consciousness is 
the first thing we meet with in the Trinity. Self-con- 
sciousness necessarily urges itself upon man as some- 
thing absolute. Existence is for him one with self- 
consciousness ; existence with self-consciousness is for 
him existence simply. If I do not know that I exist, 



96 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

it is all one whether I exist or not. Self-conscious- 
ness is for man — is. in fact, in itself — absolute. A God 
who knows not his own existence, a God without con- 
sciousness, is no God. Man cannot conceive himself 
as without consciousness : hence he cannot conceive 
God as without it. The divine self-consciousness is 
nothing else than the consciousness of consciousness as 
an absolute or divine essence. 

But this explanation is by no means exhaustive. 
On the contrary, we should be proceeding very arbi- 
trarily if we sought to reduce and limit the mystery 
of the Trinity to the proposition just lain down. Con- 
sciousness, understanding, will, love, in the sense of 
abstract essences or qualities, belong only to abstract 
philosophy. But religion is man's consciousness of 
himself in his concrete or living totality, in which 
the identity of self-consciousness exists only as the 
pregnant, complete unity of / and thou. 

Religion, at least the Christian, is abstraction from 
the world : it is essentially inward. The religious man 
leads a life withdrawn from the world, hidden in God, 
still, void of worldly joy. He separates himself from 
the world, not only in the ordinary sense, according to 
which the renunciation of the world belongs to every 
true, earnest man. but also in that wider sense which 
science gives to the word, when it calls itself world- 
wisdom (iveU-weisheit ;) but he thus separates himself, 
only because God is a Being separate from the world, 
an extra and supramundane Being, — £. e„ abstractly 
and philosophically expressed, the non-existence of 
the world. God as an extramundane being, is how- 
ever nothing else than the nature of man. withdrawn 
from the world and concentrated in itself, freed from 
all worldly ties and entanglements, transporting itself 
above the world, and positing itself in this condition 
real objective being ; or, nothing else than the 
of the power to abstract oneself from 
all that is external, and to live for and with oneself 
alone, under the form which this power takes in reli 



THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY. 9T 

gion, namely, that of a being distinct, apart from 
man.* God as God, as a simple being, is the being 
absolutely alone, solitary — absolute solitude and self- 
sufficingness ; for that only can be solitary which is 
self-sufficing. To be able to be solitary is a sign of 
character and thinking power. Solitude is the want 
of the thinker, society the want of the heart. We can 
think alone, but we can love only with another. In 
love we are dependent, for it is the need of another 
being ; we are independent only in the solitary act of 
thought. Solitude is self-sufficingness. 

But from a solitary God the essential need of dua- 
lity, of love, of community, of the real, completed self- 
consciousness, of the alter ego, is excluded. This want 
is therefore satisfied by religion thus : in the still soli- 
tude of the divine being is placed another, a second, 
different from God as to personality, but identical with 
him in essence, — God the Son, in distinction from God 
the Father. God the Father is /, God the Son Thou, 
The I is understanding, the Thou love. But Love 
with understanding and understanding with love, is 
mind, and mind is the totality of man as such — the 
total man. 

Participated life is alone true, self-satisfying, divine 
life : — this simple thought, this truth, natural, imma- 
nent in man, is the secret, the supernatural mystery of 
the Trinity. But religion expresses this truth, as it 
does every other, in an indirect manner, i. e., inverse- 
ly, for it here makes a general truth into a particular 
one, the true subject into a predicate, when it says : 
God is a participated life, a life of love and friendship. 

" Dei essentia est extra omnes creaturas, sicut ab Eetemo fait Deus in 
se ipso ; ab omnibus ergo creaturis amorem tuum abstrahas." — John 
Gerhard (Medit. sacne, M. 31). "If thou wouldst have the Creator, 
thou must do without the creature. The less of the creature, the more 
of God. Therefore, abjure all creatures, with all their consolations."— 
J. Tauler (Postilla. Hamburg, 1621, p. 312). " If a man cannot say 
in his heart with truth : God and I are alone in the world — there is no- 
thing else, — he has no peace in himself." — G. Arnold (Yon Verschma- 
hung der Welt. Wahre Abbild der Ersten Christen, L. 4, c. 2, § 7). 



98 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

The third person in the Trinity expresses nothing 
further than the love of the two divine Persons towards 
each other ; it is the unity of the Son and the Father, 
the idea of community, strangely enough regarded in 
its turn as a special personal being. 

The Holy Spirit owes its personal existence only to 
a name, a word. The earliest Fathers of the Church 
are well known to have identified the Spirit with the 
Son. Even later, its dogmatic personality wants con- 
sistency. He is the love with which God loves himself 
and man, and on the other hand, he is the love with 
which man loves God and men. Thus he is the iden- 
tity of God and man, made objective according to the 
usual mode of thought in religion, namely, as in itself 
a distinct being. But for us this unity or identity is 
already involved in the idea of the Father, and yet 
more in that of the Son. Hence we need not make 
the Holy Spirit a separate object of our analysis. Only 
this one remark further. In so far as the Holy Spirit 
represents the subjective phase, he is properly the re- 
presentation of the religious sentiment to itself, the 
representation of religious emotion, of religious en- 
thusiasm, or the personification, the rendering objective 
of religion in religion. The Holy Spirit is therefore 
the sighing creature, the yearning of the creature 
after God. 

But that there are in fact only two Persons in the 
Trinity, the third representing, as has been said, only 
love, is involved in this, that to the strict idea of love 
two suffice. With two we have the principle of multi- 
plicity and all its essential results. Two is the prin- 
ciple of multiplicity, and can therefore stand as its 
complete substitute. Jf several persons were posited 
the force of love would only 1x3 weakened — it would 
be dispersed. But love and the heart are identical ; 
the heart is no special power ; it is the man who 
love-, ami in so tar ;t- he loves. The second Person 
is therefore the self-assertion of the human heart as (he 
principleof duality, of participated life, — itis warmth ; 



THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY. 99 

the Father is light, although light was chiefly a pre- 
dicate of the Son, because in him the Godhead first 
became clear, comprehensible. But notwithstanding 
this, light as a super-terrestrial element may be ascribed 
to the Father, the representative of the Godhead as 
such, the cold being of the intelligence ; and warmth, 
as a terrestrial element, to the Son. God as the Son 
first gives warmth to man ; here God, from an object 
of the intellectual eye, of the indifferent sense of light, 
becomes an object of feeling, of affection, of enthusiasm, 
of rapture ; but only because the Son is himself nothing 
else than the glow of love, enthusiasm.* God as the 
Son is the primitive incarnation, the primitive self-re- 
nunciation of God, the negation of God in God ; for 
as the Son he is a finite being, because he exists ab alio, 
he has a source, whereas the Father has no source, he 
exists a se. Thus in the second Person the essential 
attribute of the Godhead, the attribute of self-exist- 
ence, is given up. But God the Father himself begets 
the Son ; thus he renounces his rigorous, exclusive di- 
vinity ; he humiliates, lowers himself, evolves within 
himself the principle of finiteness, of dependent exist- 
ence ; in the Son he becomes man, not indeed, in the 
first instance, as to the outward form, but as to the 
inward nature. And. for this reason it is as the Son 
that God first becomes the object of man, the object 
of feeling, of the heart. 

The heart comprehends only what springs from the 
heart. From the character of the subjective disposi- 
tion and impressions the conclusion is infallible as to 
the character of the object. The pure, free under- 
standing denies the Son, — not so the understanding 
determined by feeling, overshadowed by the heart ; on 
the contrary, it finds in the Son the depths of the God- 
head, because in him it finds feeling, which in and by 
itself is something dark, obscure, and therefore appears 

* " Exigit ergo Deus timeri ut Domiiras, honorari ut pater, ut sponsus 
amari. Quid in hia prsestat quid eminet ? — Amor." Bernardus (Sup. 
Cant. Serm. 83). 

2E 



100 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

to man a mystery. The Son lays hold on the heart, 
because the true Father of the divine Son is the human 
heart,* and the Son himself nothing else than the di- 
vine heart, i. e„ the human heart become objective to 
itself as a divine Being. 

A God, who has not in himself the quality of finite- 
ness, the principle of concrete existence, the essence of 
the feeling of dependence, is no God for a finite, con- 
crete being. The religious man cannot love a God 
who has not the essence of love in himself, neither can 
man, or, in general, any finite being be an object to a 
God who has not in himself the ground, the principle 
of finiteness. To such a God there is wanting the 
sense, the understanding, the sympathy for finiteness. 
How can God be the Father of men, how can he love 
other beings subordinate to himself, if he has not in 
himself a subordinate being, a Son, if he does not know 
what love is, so to speak, from his own experience, — 
in relation to himself? The single man takes far less 
interest in the family sorrows of another than he who 
himself has family ties. Thus God the Father loves 
men only in the Son and for the sake of the Son. The 
love to man is derived from the love to the Son. 

The Father and Son in the Trinity are therefore 
father and son not in a figurative sense, but in a strictly 
literal sense. The Father is a real father in relation 
to the Son, the Son is a real son in relation to the 
Father, or to God as the Father. The essential per- 
sonal distinction between them consists only in this, 
that the one begets, the other is begotten. If this na- 
tural empirical condition is taken away, their personal 
existence and reality are annihilated. The Christians 
— we mean of course the Christians of former days, 
who would with difficulty recognise the worldly, fri- 
volous, pagan Christians of the modern world as their 
brethren in Christ — substituted for the natural love 

* Jn ninine spirit of Catholicism — in distinction from I'ro- 

principle is the, masculine God, the masculine spirit — 
ie the mother of* <jod. 



THE MYSTEEY OF THE TRINITY. 101 

and unity immanent in man, a purely religious love 
and unity ; tbey rejected the real life of the family, the 
intimate bond of love which is naturally moral, as an 
undivine, unheavenly, L e., in truth, a worthless thing. 
But in compensation they had a Father and Son in 
God, who embraced each other with heartfelt love, 
with that intense love which natural relationship alone 
inspires. On this account the mystery of the Trinity 
was to the ancient Christians an object of unbounded 
wonder, enthusiasm and rapture, because here the satis- 
faction of those profoundest human wants which in 
reality, in life, they denied, became to them an object 
of contemplation in God.* 

It was therefore quite in order, that to complete the 
divine family, the bond of love between Father and 
Son, a third, and that a feminine person, was received 
into heaven ; for the personality of the Holy Spirit is 
a too vague and precarious — a too obviously poetic 
personification of the mutual love of the Father and 
Son, to serve as the third complementary being. It is 
true that the Virgin Mary was not so placed between 
the Father and Son as to imply that the Father had 
begotten the Son through her, because the sexual rela- 
tion was regarded by the Christians as something un- 
holy and sinful ; but it is enough that the maternal 
principle was associated with the Father and Son. 

It is in fact difficult to perceive why the Mother 
should be something unholy, L e., unworthy of God, 
when once God is Father and Son. Though it is held 
that the Father is not a Father in the natural sense — 
that, on the contrary, the Divine generation is quite 
different from the natural and human — still he remains 
a Father, and a real, not a nominal or symbolical 
Father, in relation to the Son. And the idea of the 
Mother of God, which now appears so strange to us, 
is therefore not really more strange or paradoxical, 

* " Dum Patris et Filii proprietates communionemque delectabilem 
intueor, nihil delectabilius in illis invenio, quam mutuum amoris affectum." 
— Anselmus (in Rixner's Gesch. d. Phil. II. B. Anh. p. 18). 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 102 

than the idea of the Son of God, is not more in contra- 
diction with the general, abstract definition of God 
than the Sonship. On the contrary, the Virgin Mary- 
fits in perfectly with the relations of the Trinity, since 
she conceives without man the Son whom the Father 
begets without woman ;* so that thus the Holy Virgin 
is a necessary, inherently requisite antithesis to the 
Father in the bosom of the Trinity. Moreover we 
have, if not in concreto and explicitly, yet in abstracto 
and implicitly, the feminine principle already in the 
Son. The Son is the mild, gentle, forgiving, concili- 
ating being — the womanly sentiment of God. God, 
as the Father, is the generator, the active, the principle 
of masculine spontaneity; but the Son is begotten, 
without himself begetting, Beus genitus, the passive, 
suffering, receptive being ; he receives his existence 
from the Father. The Son, as a Son, of course not as 
God, is dependent on the Father, subject to his author- 
ity. The Son is thus the feminine feeling of depen- 
dence in the Godhead ; the Son implicitly urges upon 
us the need of a real feminine being t 

The son — I mean the natural, human son — considered 
as such, is an intermediate being between the masculine 
nature of the father and the feminine nature of the 
mother ; he is, as it were, still half a man, half a woman, 
inasmuch as he has not the full, rigorous consciousness 
of independence which characterizes the man, and feels 
himself drawn rather to the mother than to the father. 
The love of the son to the mother is the first love of 
the masculine being for the feminine. The love of 
man to woman, the love of the youth for the maiden, 
receives its religious — its sole truly religious conse- 

* " Natus est de Patre semper et matre seme! ; de Patre sine sexn, de 
matre one usu. Apud patrem quippe defuit concipientis uterus ; apud 
matrem deroit seminantu amplexus." — Augustinus (Serm. ad. Pop. 
p. 872, c 1, Ed. Bened. Antw. 1701). 

f In Jewish mysticism, God, according to one school, is a masculine, 
the Holy Spirit a feminine principle, out of whose intermixture arose the 
Son, and with him the world. Gfrorer, Jahrb. d. 11. i. Abth. p. 832-34. 
The Herrnhuters also called the Holy Spirit the mother of the Saviour. 



THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY. 103 

« 

cration in the love of the son to the mother ; the son's 
love for his mother is the first yearning of man towards 
woman — his first humbling of himself before her. 

Necessarily, therefore, the idea of the Mother of 
God is associated with the idea of the Son of God, — 
the same heart that needed the one needed the other 
also. Where the Son is, the Mother cannot be absent; the 
Son is the only begotten of the Father, but the Mother 
is the concomitant of the Son. The Son is a substi- 
tute for the Mother to the Father, but not so the 
Father to the Son. To the Son the Mother is indis- 
pensable ; the heart of the Son is the heart of the 
Mother^ Why did God become man only through 
woman? Could not the Almighty have appeared as 
a man amongst men in another manner — immediately ? 
Why did the Son betake himself to the bosom of the 
Mother? For what other reason, than because the 
Son is the yearning after the Mother, because bis 
womanly, tender heart, found a corresponding ex- 
pression only in a feminine body ? It is true that the 
Son, as a natural man, dwells only temporarily in the 
shrine of this body, but the impressions which he here 
receives are inextinguishable ; the Mother is never out 
of the mind and heart of the son. If then the worship 
of the Son of God is no idolatry, the worship of the 
Mother of God is no idolatry. If herein we perceive 
the love of God to us, that he gave us his only begotten 
Son, i. e., that which was dearest to him, for our sal- 
vation, — we can perceive this love still better when 
we find in God the beating of a mother's heart. The 
highest and deepest love is the mother's love. The 
father consoles himself for the loss of his son; he 
has a stoical principle within him. The mother, on 
the contrary, is inconsolable; she is the sorrowing 
element, that which cannot be indemnified — the true 
in love. 

Where faith in the Mother of God sinks, there also 
sinks faith in the Son of God, and in God as the Father. 
The Father is a truth only where the Mother is a 



10 J: THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

truth. Love is in and by itself essentially feminine in 
its nature. The belief in the love of God is the belief 
in the feminine principle as divine.* Love apart from 
living nature is an anomaly, a phantom. Behold in 
love the holy necessity and depth of Nature ! 

Protestantism has set aside the Mother of God ; but 
this deposition of woman has been severely avenged.t 
The arms which it has used against the Mother of God 
have turned against itself, against the Son of God, 
against the whole Trinity. He who has once offered 
up the Mother of God to the understanding, is not far 
from sacrificing the mystery of the Son of God as an 
anthropomorphism. The anthropomorphism is cer- 
tainly veiled when the feminine being is -excluded, but 
only veiled — not removed. It is true that Protestan- 
tism had no need of the heavenly bride, because it 
received with open arms the earthly bride. But for 
that very reason it ought to have been consequent and 
courageous enough to give up not only the Mother, but 
the Son and the Father. Only he who has no earthly 
parents needs heavenly ones. The triune God is the 
God of Catholicism ; he has a profound, heartfelt, ne- 
cessary, truly religious significance, only in antithesis 
to the negation of all substantial bonds, in antithesis 
to the life of the anchorite, the monk, and the nun.J 
The triune God has a substantial meaning only where 
there is an abstraction from the substance of real life. 
The more empty life is, the fuller, the more concrete 
is God. The impoverishing of the real world, and the 

* M For it could not have been difficult or impossible to God to bring 
his Son into the world without a mother ; but it was His will to use the 
woman for that end." — Luther (T. ii. p. £68). 

f in the Concordienbucb, Erklar. Art. 8, and in the Apol. of the Augs- 
burg Confession, Mary is nevertheless still called the " Blessed Virgin, 
who was truly the mother of God, and yet remained a virgin," — "worthy 
of all honour." 

X u Sit monaohns quasi bfelchisedec sine patre, sine raatre, sine genea- 
logia; neque patrcm Bibl rocet super terrain. Imo sic existimet, quasi 
ipse sit solus ct Dens. (Specul Monach. Pseudo-Bernard.) Melchisedec. 

refertur ad exc-iuplum, ut tanquam sine patre ct sine matre sacer- 

dos eese debeat." — Ambrosius. 



THE MYSTERY OP THE TRINITY. 105 

enriching of God, is one act. Only the poor man has 
a rich God. God springs out of the feeling of a want ; 
what man is in need of, whether this be a definite and 
therefore conscious, or an unconscious need,- — that is 
God. Thus the disconsolate feeling of a void, of lone- 
liness, needed a God in whom there is society, a union 
of beings fervently loving each other. 

Here we have the true explanation of the fact, that 
the Trinity has in modern times lost first its practical, 
and ultimately the theoretical significance. 



eS 



106 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE MYSTERY OF THE LOGOS AND DIVINE 
IMAGE. 

The essential significance of the Trinity is, however, 
concentrated in the idea of the second Person. The 
warm interest of Christians in the Trinity has been, in 
the main, only an interest in the Son of God.* The 
fierce contention concerning the Homousios and Homo* 
iousios was not an empty one, although it turned upon 
a letter. The point in question was the co-equality 
and divine dignity of the second Person, and therefore 
the honour of the Christian religion itself; for its 
essential, characteristic object is the second Person ; 
and that which is essentially the object of a religion is 
truly, essentially its God. The real God of any reli- 
gion is the so-called Mediator, because lie alone is the 
immediate object of religion. He who, instead of 
applying to God, applies to a saint, does so only on 
the assumption that the saint has all power with God, 
that what lie prays for, i.e., wishes and wills, God readily 
performs ; that thus God is entirely in the hands of the 
saint. Supplication is the means, under the guise of 
humility and submission, of exercising one's power 
and superiority over another being. That to which 
my mind first turns, is also in truth the first being 

* "Negaa ergo Denm, a qod omnia filio, quae Dei sunt, deferentnr.' 

— AmLroHu*- de Fide ad Grratianum, 1. iii. c. 7. On the same ground 
the Latin Church adhered BO tenaciously to the dogma that the Holy 
Spirit proceed'-d DOt from the Father alone, as the Greek Church main- 
tained, hut from the Son alflO. See on this suhject J. G. Walckii, Hist. 
Contr. Gr. ct Lat. de Proc. Spir. S. Jeiux, 1751. 



THE MYSTERY OF THE LOGOS. 107 

to me. I turn to the saint, not because the saint is 
dependent on God, but because God is dependent on 
the saint, because God is determined and ruled by the 
prayers, i. e., by the wish or heart of the saint. The 
distinctions which the Catholic theologians made be- 
tween latreia, doulia, and hyperdoulia, are absurd, 
groundless sophisms. The God in the background of 
the Mediator is only an abstract, inert conception, the 
conception or idea of the Godhead in general ; and it 
is not to reconcile us with this idea, but to remove it, 
to a distance, to negative it, because it is no object for 
religion, that the Mediator interposes.* God above 
the Mediator is nothing else than the cold understand- 
ing above the heart, like Fate above the Olympic gods. 
Man, as an emotional and sensuous being, is govern- 
ed and made happy only by images, by sensible repre- 
sentations. Mind presenting itself as at once type- 
creating, emotional, and sensuous, is the imagination. 
The second Person in God, who is in truth the first 
person in religion, is the nature of the imagination 
made objective. The definitions of the second Person 
are principally images or symbols ; and these images 
do not proceed from man's incapability of conceiving 
the object otherwise than symbolically, — which is an 
altogether false interpretation, — but the thing cannot 
be conceived otherwise than symbolically because the 
thing itself is a symbol or image. The Son is there- 
fore expressly called the Image of God ; his essence is 
that he is an image — the representation of God, the 
visible glory of the invisible God. The Son is the 
satisfaction of the need for mental images, the nature 
of the imaginative activity in man made objective as 
an absolute, divine activity. Man makes to himself 

* This is expressed very significantly in the Incarnation. God re- 
nounces, denies his majesty, power, and infinity, in order to become a 
man ; i.e., man denies the God who is not himself a man, and only affirms 
the God who affirms man. Exinanivit, says St. Bernard, majestate et po- 
tential non bonitate et misericordia. That which cannot be renounced, 
cannot be denied, is thus the Divine goodness and mercy, i.e., the self- 
affirmation of the human heart. 



108 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

an image of God, i. e.. he converts the abstract Being 
of the reason, the Being of the thinking power, into an 
object of sense or imagination.* But he places this 
image in God himself, because his want would not be 
satisfied if he did not regard this image as an objective 
reality, if it were nothing more for him than a subjec- 
tive image, separate from God, — a mere figment devised 
by man, And it is in fact no devised, no arbitrary 
image : for it expresses the necessity of the imagination, 
the necessity of affirming the imagination as a divine 
power. The Son is the reflected splendour of the 
imagination, the image dearest to the heart ; but for 
the very reason that he is only an object of the imag- 
ination, lie is only the nature of the imagination made 
objective.! 

It is clear from this, how blinded by prejudice dog- 
matic speculation is, when, entirely overlooking the 
inward genesis of the Son of God as the Image of God, 
it demonstrates the Son as a metaphysical ens, as an 
object of thought, whereas the Son is a declension, a 
falling off from the metaphysical idea of the Godhead ; 
— a falling off. however, which religion naturally places 
in God himself in order to justify it, and not to feel 
it as a falling off. The Son is the chief and ultimate 
principle of image worship, for he is the image of God ; 
and the image necessarily takes the place of the thing. 
The adoration of the saint in his image, is the adora- 
tion of the image as the saint. Wherever the image 
is the essential expression, the organ of religion, there 
also it is the essence of religion. 

The Council of Nice adduced amongst other grounds 
for the religious use of images, the authority of Gre- 
gory of Nyssa, who said that he could never look at 

* It is obvious that the Image of God has also another signification, 
namely, that the personal, visible man is God himself. But here the 
image iu considered dmply aa an image. 

f Let the reader only i . example, the Transfiguration, the 

Resurrection, and the Ascension of* Christ. 



THE MYSTERY OP THE LOGOS. 109 

an image which represented the sacrifice of Isaac with- 
out being moved to tears, because it so vividly brought 
before him that event in sacred history. But the effect 
of the represented object is not the effect of the object 
as such, but the effect of the representation. The holy 
object is simply the haze of holiness in which the image 
veils its mysterious power. The religious object is 
only a pretext, by means of which art or imagination 
can exercise its dominion over men unhindered. For 
the religious consciousness, it is true, the sacredness of 
the image is associated, and necessarily so, only with 
the sacredness of the object ; but the religious con- 
sciousness is not the measure of truth. Indeed, the 
Church itself, while insisting on the distinction be- 
tween the image and the object of the image, and deny- 
ing that the worship is paid to the image, has at the 
same time made at least an indirect admission of the 
truth, by itself declaring the sacredness of the image.* 
But the ultimate, highest principle of image-worship 
is the worship of the Image of God in God. The Son, 
who isthe ''brightness of His glory, the express image 
of His person/ 7 is the entrancing splendour of the ima- 
gination, which only manifests itself in visible images. 
Both to inward and outward contemplation the repre- 
sentation of Christ, the Image of God, was the image 
of images. The images of the saints are only optical 
multiplications of one and the same image. The specu- 
lative deduction of the Image of God is therefore 
nothing more than an unconscious deduction and estab- 
lishing of image-worship ; for the sanction of the 
principle is also the sanction of its necessary conse- 
quences ; the sanction of the archetype is the sanction 
of its semblance. If God has an image of himself, why 
should not I have an image of God ? If God loves his 

*'" Sacram imaginem Domini nostri Jesu Christ! et omnium Salvatoris 
sequo honore cum libro sanctorum evangeliorum adorari decernimus . . . 
Dignum est enim ut . . . . propter lionorem qui ad principia refertur, 
etiam derivative imagines honorentur et adorentur." — Gener. Const. Cone. 
viii. Art. 10. Can. 3. 



110 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Image as himself, why should not I also love the Image 
of God as I love God himself? If the Image of God 
is God himself, why should not the image of the saint 
be the saint himself? If it is no supersition to believe 
that the image which God makes of himself, is no image, 
no mere conception, but a substance, a person, — why 
should it be a supersition to believe that the image of 
the saint is the sensitive substance of the saint? The 
Image of God weeps and bleeds : why then should not 
the image a saint also weep and bleed? Does the 
distinction lie in the fact that the image of the saint 
is a product of the hands ? Why. the hands did not 
make this image, but the mind which animated the 
hands, the imagination ; and if God makes an image 
of himself, that also is only a product of the imagina- 
tion. Or does the distinction proceed from this, that 
the Image of God is produced by God himself, whereas 
the image of the saint is made by another? Why, the 
image of the saint is also a product of the saint him- 
self : for he appears to the artist ; the artist only re- 
presents him as he appears. 

Connected v> ith the nature of the image is another 
definition of the Second Person, namely, that he is the 
Word of God. 

A Word in an abstract image, the imaginary thing, 
or. in so far as everything is ultimately an object of 
the thinking power, it is the imagined thought : hence, 
men when they know the word, the name for a thing, 
fancy that they know the thing also. Words are a 
result of the imagination. Sleepers who dream vividly, 
and invalids who are delirious, speak. The power of 
speech is a poetic talent. Brutes do not speak because 
they have no poetic faculty. Thought expresses itself 
only by images : the power by which thought expresses 
itself is the imagination; the imagination expressing 
itself is speech. Be who .-peak-, lays under a spell, 
fascinates those to whom he .-peaks : but the power of 
WOrdfl is the power of imagination. Therefore to the 
ancients, as children of the imagination, the Word was 



THE MYSTERY OP THE LOGOS. Ill 

a being — a mysterious, magically powerful being. Even 
the Christians, and not only the vulgar among them, 
but also the learned, the Fathers of the Church, 
attached to the mere name Christ, mysterious powers 
of healing.* And in the present day the common 
people still believe that it is possible to bewitch men 
-by mere words. Whence comes this ascription of 
imaginary influences to words? Simply from this, 
that words themselves are only a result of the imagina- 
tion, and hence have the effect of a narcotic on man, 
imprison him under the power of the imagination. 
Words possess a revolutionizing force ; words govern 
mankind. Words are held sacred ; while the things 
of reason and truth are decried. 

The affirming or making objective of the nature of 
the imagination is therefore directly connected with 
the affirming or making objective of the nature of 
speech, of the Word. Man has not only an instinct, 
an internal necessity, which impels him to think, to 
perceive, to imagine ; he has also the impulse to speak, 
to utter, impart his thoughts. A divine impulse this 
— a divine power, the power of words. The word is 
the imaged, revealed, radiating, lustrous, enlightening 
thought. The word is the light of the world. The 
word guides to all truth, unfolds all mysteries, reveals 
the unseen, makes present the past and the future, de- 
fines the infinite, perpetuates the transient. Men pass 
away, the word remains ; the word is life and truth. 
All power is given to the word : the word makes the 
blind see and the lame walk, heals the sick, and brings 
the dead to life ; — the word works miracles, and the 
only rational miracles. The word is the gospel, the 
paraclete of mankind. To convince thyself of the 
divine nature of speech, imagine thyself alone and for- 
saken, yet acquainted with language; and imagine 
thyself further hearing for the first time the word of a 

* " Tanta certe vis nomini Jesu inest contra dsemones, ut nonnunquam 
etiam a malis nomiiiatum sit efiicax." — Origenes adv. Celsum, 1. i.; see 
alsol. iii. 



112 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 

human being : would not this word seem to thee angelic, 
would it not sound like the voice of God himself, like 
heavenly music ? Words are not really less rich, less 
pregnant than music, though music seems to say more, 
and appears deeper and richer than words, for this 
reason simply, that it is invested with that preposses- 
sion, that illusion. 

The Word has power to redeem, to reconcile, to 
bless, to make free. The sins which we confess are 
forgiven us by virtue of the divine power of the word. 
The dying man who gives forth in speech his long-con- 
cealed sins, departs reconciled. The forgiveness of 
sins lies in the confession of sins. The sorrows which 
we confide to our friend are already half healed. 
Whenever we speak of a subject, the passions which it 
has excited in us are allayed ; we see more clearly ; 
the object of anger, of vexation, of sorrow, appears to 
us in a light in which we perceive the unwor thin ess of 
those passions. If we are in darkness and doubt on 
any matter, we need only speak of it ; — often in the 
very moment in which we Open our lips to consult a 
friend, the doubts and difficulties disappear. The word 
makes man free. He who cannot express himself is a 
slave. Hence, excessive passion, excessive joy, exces- 
sive grief, are speechless. To speak is an act of free- 
dom ; the word is freedom. Justly therefore is language 
held to be the root of culture ; where language is cul- 
tivated, man is cultivated. The barbarism of the middle 
ages disappeared before the revival of language. 

As we can conceive nothing else as a Divine Being 
than the Rational which we think, the Good which we 
love, the Beautiful which we perceive; so we know no 
higher spiritually operative power and expression of 
power, than the power of the Word.* God is the sum 
of all reality. All that man feels or knows as a reality, 

* "God rereaJj himself to as, at the Speaker, 'who lias, in himself, an 
eternal ancreated Word, whereby he created the world and all things, 
with glight labour , namely with speech, so that to God it is not more 
dillicult to create than it is tu u to name." — Luther, t. i. p. 302. 



THE MYSTERY OF THE LOGOS. 113 

he must place in God or regard as God. Religion 
must therefore be conscious of the power of the word 
as a divine power. The Word of God is the divinity 
of the word, as it becomes an object to man within the 
sphere of religion, — the true nature of the human 
word. The Word of God is supposed to be distin- 
guished from the human word in that it is no transient 
breath, but an imparted being. But does not the word 
of man also contain the being of man, his imparted 
self, — at least when it is a true word ? Thus religion 
takes the appearance of the human word for its essence ; 
hence it necessarily conceives the true nature of the 
Word to be a special being, distinct from the human 
word. 



114 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 



CHAPTER YIIL 

THE MYSTERY OF THE OOSMOGONICAL PRINCIPLE 
IX GOD. 



The second Person, as God revealing, manifesting, 
declaring himself (Deus se dicit), is the world-creating 
principle in God. But this means nothing else than 
that the second Person is intermediate between the nou- 
menal nature of God and the phenomenal nature of 
the world, that he is the divine principle of the finite, 
of that which is distinguished from God. The second 
Person as begotten, as not a se. not existing in him- 
self, has the fundamental condition of the finite in him- 
self.* But at the same time, he is not yet a real finite 
Being, posited out of God : on the contrary, he is still 
identical with God. — as identical as the son is with 
the father, the son being indeed another person, but 
still of like nature with the father. The second Per- 
son, therefore, does not represent to us the pure idea 
of the Godhead, but neither does he represent the 
pure idea of humanity, or of reality in general : he is 
an intermediate Being between the two opposites. 
The opposition of the noumenal or invisible divine 
nature and the phenomenal or visible nature of the 
worl^ is however nothing else than the opposition 
between the nature of abstraction and the nature of 

* •• Hvlar: HI Si quia iiinascibilem et sine initio dicat filium, 

quasi duo bum principio <-t duo Lnnascibilia, et duo innata dicens, duos 
faciat I it. Caput autem quod est priiieipium Ohristi, 

. . . Filium iun&acibilem oonfiteri impiissimum est." — Fetrus 
Lomb. Sent. 1. i. din. 31. c. i. 



THE MYSTERY OF THE COSMOGONICAL PRINCIPLE. 115 

perception ; but that which connects abstraction with 
perception is the imagination : consequently, the 
transition from God to the world by means of the 
second Person, is only the form in which religion 
makes objective the transition from abstraction to 
perception by means of the imagination. It is the 
imagination alone by which man neutralizes the oppo- 
sition between God and the world All religious 
cosmogonies are products of the imagination. Every 
being, intermediate between God and the world, let 
it be defined how it may, is a being of the imagina- 
tion. The psychological truth and necessity which 
lies at the foundation of all these theogonies and cos- 
mogonies, is the truth and necessity of the imagina- 
tion as a middle term between the abstract and 
concrete. And the task of philosophy, in investigat- 
ing this subject, is to comprehend the relation of the 
imagination to the reason, — the genesis of the image 
by means of which an object of thought becomes an 
object of sense, of feeling. 

But the nature of the imagination is the complete, 
exhaustive truth of the cosmogonic principle, only 
where the antithesis of God and the world expresses 
nothing but the indefinite antithesis of the noumenal, 
invisible, incomprehensible Being, God, and the visi- 
ble, tangible existence of the world. If, on the other 
hand, the cosmogonic being is conceived and expressed 
abstractly, as is the case in religious speculation, we 
have also to recognise a more abstract psychological 
truth as its foundation. 

The world is not God ; it is other than God, the 
opposite of God, or at least that which is different 
from God. But that which is different from God, 
cannot have come immediately from God, but only 
from a distinction of God in God. The second Person 
is God distinguishing himself from himself in himself, 
setting himself opposite to himself, hence being an 
object to himself. The self-distinguishing Of God from 
himself is the ground of that which is different 



116 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

from himself, and thus self-consciousness is the origin 
of the world. God first thinks the world in thinking 
himself: to think oneself is to beget oneself, to think 
the world is to create the world. Begetting: precedes 
creating. The idea of the production of the world, of 
another being who is not God. is attained through the 
idea of the production of another being: who is like 
God. 

This cosmogonical process is nothing else than the 
mystic paraphrase of a psychological process, nothing 
else than the unity of consciousness and self-conscious- 
ness, made objective. God thinks himself: — thus he 
is self-conscious. God is self-consciousness posited as 
an object, as a being : but inasmuch as he knows him- 
self, thinks himself, he also thinks another than himself; 
for to know oneself is to distinguish oneself from ano- 
ther, whether this be a possible, merely conceptional. or 
a real being. Thus the world — at least the possibility. 
the idea of the world — is posited with consciousness, or 
rather conveyed in it. The Son, i.e., God thought by 
himself, objective to himself, the original reflection of 
God, the other God. is the principle of Creation. The 
truth which lies at the foundation of this is the nature 
of man : the identity of his self-consciousness with his 
consciousness of another who is identical with himself, 
and of another who is not identical with himself. And 
the second, the other who is of like nature, is neces- 
sarily the middle term between the first and third. 
The idea of another in general, of one who is essen- 
tially different from me arises to me first through the 
idea of one who is essentially like me. 

Consciousness of the world is the consciousness of 
my limitation : if I knew nothing of a world, I should 
know nothing of limits : but the consciousness of my 
limitation in contradiction with the impulse of 

myqgoism towards onlimitednesa. Thus from egoiim 
dved a- Absolute < <;<><! is the absolute Self ) lean- 
not puss immediately to it- opposite; 1 must intro- 
duce, preclude, moderate this contradiction by the 



THE MYSTERY OF THE COSMOGONICAL PRINCIPLE. 117 

consciousness of a being who is indeed another, and 
in so far gives me the perception of my limitation, but 
in such a way as at the same time to affirm my own 
nature, make my nature objective to me. The con- 
sciousness of the world is a humiliating consciousness; 
the Creation was an " act of humility f but the first 
stone against which the pride of egoism stumbles, is 
the thou, the alter ego. The ego first steels its glance in 
the eye of a thou, before it endures the contemplation 
of a being which does not reflect its own image. My 
fellow-man is the bond between me and the world. I 
am, and I feel myself, dependent on the world, because 
I first feel myself dependent on other men. If I did 
not need man, I should not need the world. I recon- 
cile myself with the world only through my fellow- 
man. Without other men, the world would be for me 
not only dead and empty, but meaningless. Only 
through his fellow does man become clear to himself 
and self-conscious ; but only when I am clear to my- 
self, does the world become clear to me. A man exist- 
ing absolutely alone, would lose himself without any 
sense of his individuality in the ocean of Nature ; he 
would neither comprehend himself as man, nor Nature 
as Nature. The first object of man is man. The sense 
of Nature, which opens to us the consciousness of the 
world as a world, is a later product ; for it first arises 
through the distinction of man from himself. The 
natural philosophers of Greece were preceded by the 
so-called seven Sages, whose wisdom had immediate 
reference to human life only. 

The ego, then, attains to consciousness of the world 
through consciousness of the thou. Thus man is the 
God of man. That he is, he has to thank Nature ; 
that he is man, he has to thank man ; spiritually as 
well as physically, he can achieve nothing without his 
fellow-man. Pour hands can do more than two ; but 
also, four eyes can see more than two. And this com- 
bined power is distinguished not only in quantity but 
also in quality from that which is solitary. In isola- 



118 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

tion human power is limited, in combination it is 
infinite. The knowledge of a single man is limited, 
but reason, science, is unlimited, for it is a common 
act of mankind ; and it is so, not only because innu- 
merable men co-operate in the construction of science, 
but also in the more profound sense, that the scientific 
genius of a particular age comprehends in itself the 
thinking powers of the preceding age, though it 
modifies them in accordance with its own special cha- 
racter. Wit, acumen, imagination, feeling as distin- 
guished from sensation, reason as a subjective faculty, 
— all these so-called powers of the soul, are powers of 
humanity, not of man as an individual ; they are pro- 
ducts of culture, products of human society. Only 
where man has contact and friction with his fellow- 
man are wit and sagacity kindled ; hence there is more 
wit in the town than in the country, more in great 
towns than in small ones. Only where man suns and 
warms himself in the proximity of man, arise feeling 
and imagination. Love, which requires mutuality, is 
the spring of poetry ; and only where man communi- 
cates with man, only in speech, a social act, awakes 
reason. To ask a question and to answer, are the first 
acts of thought. Thought originally demands two. 
It is not until man has reached an advanced stage of 
culture that he can double himself, so as to play the 
part of another within himself. To think and to 
speak are therefore with all ancient and sensuous na- 
tions, identical ; they think only in speaking; their 
thought is only conversation. The common people, 
?. c. people in whom the power of abstraction has not 
been developed, are still incapable of understanding 
what is written if they do not read it audibly, if they 
do not pronounce what they read. In this point of 
view Eobbes correctly enough derives the understand- 
ing of man from his ears I 

Reduced to abstract logical categories, the creative 
principle in God -expresses uothing further than the 
tautological proposition: the different can only pro- 



THE MYSTERY OF THE COSMOGONICAL PRINCIPLE. 119 

ceed from a principle of difference, not from a simple 
being. However the Christian philosophers and theo- 
logians insisted on the creation of the world out of 
nothing, they were unable altogether to evade the old 
axiom — " nothing comes from nothing/ 7 because it 
expresses a law of thought. It is true that they sup- 
posed no real matter as the principle of the diversity of 
material things, but they made the Divine understand- 
ing (and the Son is the wisdom, the science, the under- 
standing of the Father) — as that which comprehends 
within itself all things, as spiritual matter — the prin- 
ciple of real matter. The distinction between the 
heathen eternity of matter and the Christian creation 
in this respect, is only that the heathens ascribed 
to the world a real, objective eternity, whereas the 
Christians gave it an invisible, immaterial eternity. 
Things were, before they existed positively, — not, in- 
deed, as an object of sense, but of the subjective under- 
standing. The Christians, whose principle is that of 
absolute subjectivity,conceive all things as effected only 
through this principle. The matter posited by their 
subjective thought, conceptional, subjective matter, is 
therefore to them the first matter, — far more excellent 
than real, objective matter. Nevertheless , this dis- 
tinction is only a distinction in the mode of existence. 
The world is eternal in God. Or did it spring up in 
him as a sudden idea, a caprice? Certainly man can 
conceive this too ; but, in doing so, he deifies nothing 
but his own irrationality. If, on the contrary, I abide 
by reason, I can only derive the world from its essence, 
its idea, i. e., one mode of its existence from another 
mode ; in other words, I can derive the world only 
from itself. The world has its basis in itself, as has 
every thing in the world which has a claim to the 
name of species. The differentia specifica, the peculiar 
character, that by which a given being is what it is, 
is always in the ordinary sense inexplicable, undedu- 
cible, is through itself, has its cause in itself. 
The distinction between the world and God as the 



120 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

creator of the world, is therefore only a formal one. 
The nature of God — for the divine understanding, that 
which comprehends within itself all things, is the 
divine nature itself; hence God, inasmuch as he thinks 
and knows himself, thinks and knows at the same time 
the world and all things — the nature of God is nothing 
else than the abstract tliov.cjlit nature of the world ; 
the nature of the world nothing else than the real, con- 
crete, perceptible nature of God. Hence, creation is 
nothing more than a formal act ; for that which, before 
the creation, was an object of thought, of the under- 
standing, is by creation simply made an object of sense, 
its ideal contents continuing the same ; although it 
remains absolutely inexplicable how a real material 
thing can spring out of a pure thought.* 

So it is with plurality and difference — if we reduce 
the world to these abstract categories — in opposition 
to the unity and identity of the Divine nature. Real 
difference can be derived only from a being which has 
a principle of difference in itself. But I posit dif- 
ference in the orginal being, because I have origi- 
nally found difference as a positive reality. Whatever 
difference is in itself nothing, there also no difference 
is conceived in the principle of things. I posit differ- 
ence as an essential category, as a truth, where I 
derive it from the original being, and vice versa : the 
two propositions are identical. The rational expres- 
sion is this : Difference lies as necessarily in the reason 
as identity. 

But as difference is a positive condition of the rea- 
son, I cannot deduce it without presupposing it ; I 
cannot explain it except by itself, because it is an ori- 
ginal, self-luminous, self-attesting reality. Through 
what moans arises the world, that which is distinguish- 
ed from God ? through the distinguishing of God from 
himself in himself. God thinks himself, he is an 
object to himself; he distinguishes himself from him- 

* It is therefore mere self-delusion to suppose that the hypothesis of a 
Creation explains the CT&rtCnoe of the world. 



THE MYSTERY OF THE COSMOGONICAL PRINCIPLE. 121 

self. Hence this distinction, the world, arises only 
from a distinction of another kind, the external dis- 
tinction from an internal one, the static distinction 
from a dynamic one, — from an act of distinction : thus 
I establish difference only through itself; L e., it is an 
original concept, a ne plus ultra of my thought, a law, 
a necessity, a truth. The last distinction that I can 
think, is the distinction of a being from and in itself. 
The distinction of one being from another is self-evi- 
dent, is already implied in their existence, is a palpa- 
ble truth : they are two. But I first establish differ- 
ence for thought when I discern it in one and the 
same being, when I unite it with the law of identity. 
Herein lies the ultimate truth of difference. The eos- 
mogonic principle in God, reduced to its last elements, 
is nothing else than the act of thought in its simplest 
forms, made objective. If I remove difference from 
God, he gives me no material for thought ; he ceases 
to be an object of thought ; for difference is an essen- 
tial principle of thought. And if I consequently place 
difference in God, what else do I establish, what else 
do I make an object, than the truth and necessity of 
this principle of thought ? 



122 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM OR OF NATURE 
IN GOD. 



Interesting material for the criticism of cosmogonic 
theogonic fancies is furnished in the doctrine — revived 
by Schelling and drawn from Jacob Boehme — of eternal 
Nature in God. 

God is pure spirit, clear self-consciousness, moral 
personality ; Nature, on the contrary, is, at least parti- 
ally, confused, dark, desolate, immoral, or to say no 
more, unmoral. But it is self-contradictory that the 
impure should proceed from the pure, darkness from 
light. How then can we remove these obvious diffi- 
culties in the way of assigning a divine origin to 
Nature ? Only by positing this impurity, this dark- 
ness in God, by distinguishing in God himself a prin- 
ciple of light and a principle of darkness. In other 
words, we can only explain the origin of darkness by 
renouncing the idea of origin, and presupposing dark- 
ness as existing from the beginning.* 

But that which is dark in Nature is the irrational, the 
material, — Nature strictly, as distinguished from intel- 
ligence. Hence the simple meaning of this doctrine is, 
that Nature, Matter, cannot be explained as a result of in- 
telligence; on the contrary, it is the basis of intelligence, 
the basis of personality, without itself having any basis ; 

* It i to criticise this crass mystical theory. We 

merely remark here, that darkness can be explained only when it la de- 
rived from Ught : that the derivation of the darkness iii Nature from light 
appears BO impOSSibQitj only when it. is DOt perceived that even in dark- 
ness ihere is s residue of light, that the darkness in Nature is not an ab- 
solute, but a modified darkness, temueri 1 by Light. 



THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 123 

spirit without Nature is an unreal abstraction ; con- 
sciousness developes itself only out of Nature. But this 
materialistic doctrine is veiled in a mystical yet attrac- 
tive obscurity, inasmuch as it is not expressed in the 
clear, simple language of reason, but emphatically enun- 
ciated in that consecrated word of the emotions — God. 
If the light in God springs out of the darkness in God, 
this is only because it is involved in the idea of light 
in general, that it illuminates darkness, thus presuppos- 
ing darkness, not making it. If then God is once sub- 
jected to a general law, — as he must necessarily be 
unless he be made the arena of conflict for the most 
senseless notions, — if self-consciousness in God as well 
as in itself, as in general, is evolved from a principle 
in Nature, why is not this natural principle abstracted 
from God ? That which is a law of consciousness in 
itself, is a law for the consciousness of every personal 
being, whether man, angel, demon, God, or whatever 
else thou mayest conceive to thyself as a being. To 
what then, seen in their true light, do the two prin- 
ciples in God reduce themselves ? The one to Nature, 
at least to Nature as it exists in the conception, ab- 
stracted from its reality ; the 'other to mind, conscious- 
ness, personality. The one half, the reverse side, thou 
dost not name God, but only the obverse side, on 
which he presents to thee mind, consciousness : thus 
his specific essence, that whereby he is God, is mind, 
intelligence, consciousness. Why then dost thou make 
that which is properly the subject in God as God, i. e., 
as mind, into a mere predicate, as if God existed as 
God apart from mind, from consciousness ? Why, but 
because thou art enslaved by mystical religious specu- 
lation, because the primary principle in thee is the 
imagination, thought being only secondary and serving 
but to throw into formula the products of the imagina- 
tion, — because thou fcelest at ease and at home only 
in the deceptive twilight of mysticism. 

Mysticism is deuteroscopy — a fabrication of phrases 
having a double meaning. The mystic speculates con- 

f2 



124 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

cerning the essence of Nature or of man, but under, 
and by means of, the supposition that he is speculating 
concerning another, a personal being, distinct from 
both. The mystic has the same objects as the plain, 
self-conscious thinker ; but the real object is regarded 
by the mystic, not as itself, but as an imaginary being, 
and hence the imaginary object is to him the real ob- 
ject. Thus here, in the mystical doctrine of the two 
principles in &od, the real object is pathology, the 
imaginary one, theology ; L e., pathology is converted 
into theology. There would be nothing to urge against 
this, if, consciously, real pathology were recognised 
and expressed as theology ; indeed, it is precisely our 
task to show that theology is nothing else than an un- 
conscious, esoteric pathology, anthropology, and psy- 
chology, and that therefore real anthropology, real 
pathology, and real psychology have far more claim 
to the name of theology, than has theology itself, be- 
cause this is nothing more than an imaginary psycho- 
logy and anthropology. But this doctrine or theory 
is supposed — and for this reason it is mystical and 
fantasic — to be not pathology, but theology, in the old 
or ordinary sense of the word ; it is supposed that we 
have here unfolded to us the life of a Being distinct 
from us, while nevertheless it is only our own nature 
which is unfolded, though at the same time again shut 
up from us by the fact that this nature is represented 
as inhering in another being. The mystic philosopher 
supposes that in God, not in us human individuals, — 
that would be far too trivial a truth, — reason first 
appears after the Passion of Nature ; — that not man, 
but God, has wrestled himself out of the obscurity of 
confused feelings and impulses into the clearness of 
knowledge; that not in our subjective, limited mode 
of conception, bul in God himself, the nervous tremors 
of darkness precede the joyful consciousness of light; 
in short, he supposes thai his theory presents not a 
hiptory of human throes, bul a history of the develop- 
ment, u c, the throes of God — for developments (or 



THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 125 

transitions) are birth-struggles. But alas ! this suppo- 
sition itself belongs only to the pathological element. 

If, therefore, the cosmogonic process presents to us 
the Light of the power of distinction as belonging to 
the divine essence ; so, on the other hand, the Night 
or Nature in God, represents to us the Pensees confuses 
of Leibnitz as divine powers. But the Pensees confuses 
— confused, obscure conceptions and thoughts, or more 
correctly images, represent the flesh, matter ; — a pure 
intelligence, separate from matter, has only clear, free 
thoughts, no obscure, L e., fleshly ideas, no material 
images, exciting the imagination and setting the blood 
in commotion. The Night in God, therefore, implies 
nothing else than this : God is not only a spiritual but 
also a material, corporeal, fleshly being ; but as man is 
man, and receives his designation, in virtue not of his 
fleshly nature, but of his mind, so is it with God. 

But the mystic philosopher expresses this only in 
obscure, mystical, indefinite, dissembling images. In- 
stead of the rude, but hence all the more precise and 
striking expression, flesh, it substitutes the equivocal, 
abstract words, nature and ground. " As nothing is 
before or out of God, he must have the ground of his 
existence in himself. This all philosophies say, but 
they speak of this ground as a mere idea, without 
making it something real. This ground of his exist- 
ence which God has In himself, is not God considered 
absolutely, i. e., in so far as he exists ; it is only the 
ground of his existence. It is Nature — in God ; an 
existence inseparable from him, it is true, but still 
distinct. Analogically (?), this relation may be illus- 
trated by gravitation and light in nature." But this 
ground is the non-intelligent in God. M That which is 
the commencement of an intelligence (in itself) cannot 
also be intelligent," "In the strict sense, intelligence 
is born of this unintelligent principle. Without this 
antecedent darkness there is no reality of the Creator." 
'• With abstract ideas of God as actus purissimus, such 
as were laid down by the older philosophy, or such as 



126 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the modern, out of anxiety to remove God far from 
Nature, is always reproducing, we can effect nothing. 
God is something more real than a mere moral order 
of the world, and has quite another and a more living 
motive power in himself than is ascribed to him by the 
jejune subtilty of abstract idealists. Idealism, if it 
has not a living realism as its basis, is as empty and 
abstract a system as that of Leibnitz or Spinoza, or as 
any other dogmatic system/' 7 " So long as the God of 
modern theism remains the simple, supposed purely 
essential but in fact nonessential Being that all modern 
systems make him, so long as a real duality is not re- 
cognised in God, and a limiting, negativing force, 
opposed to the expansive affirming force, so long will 
the denial of a personal God be scientific honesty. 77 
"All consciousness is concentration, is a gathering to- 
gether, a collecting of oneself. This negativing force 
by which a being turns back upon itself, is the true 
force of personality, the force of egoism. 77 " How should 
there be a fear of God, if there were no strength in 
him? But that there should be something in God, 
which is mere force and strength, cannot be held as- 
tonishing if only it be not maintained that he is this 
alone and nothing besides. 77 * 

But what then is force and strength which is merely 
such, if not corporeal force and strength? Dost thou 
know any power which stands at thy command, in 
distinction from the power of kindness and reason, 
besides muscular power? If thou canst effect nothing 
through kindness and the arguments of reason, force 
is what thou must take refuge in. But canst thou 
" effect" anything without strong arms and fists? Is 
there known to thee, in distinction from the power of 
the moral order of the world, "another and more living 
motive power" than the lexer of the criminal court? 
Is not Nature without body also an " empty, abstract" 
idea, a "jejune Bubtility?" Is not the mystery ofXa- 

* ScheUing, Ue] *en far Menschlichen Freiheit, 429, 482, 

427. Denkmal Jacobi's, s. 82, 'J7- ( J ( J. 



THE MYSTERY OP MYSTICISM. 127 

ture the mystery of corporeality ? Is not the system 
of a " living realism 77 the system of the organized body ? 
Is there, in general, any other force, the opposite of 
intelligence, than the force of flesh and blood, — any 
other strength of Nature than the strength of the 
fleshly impulses ? And the strongest of the impulses 
of Nature, is it not the sexual feeling ? Who does not 
remember the old proverb : "Amare et sapere vix Deo 
competit?" So that if we would posit in God a Na- 
ture, an existence opposed to the light of intelligence, 
— can we think of a more living, a more real anti- 
thesis, than that of amare and sapere, of spirit and 
flesh, of freedom and the sexual impulse ? 

Personality, individuality, consciousness, without 
Nature, is nothing ; or, which is the same thing, an 
empty, unsubstantial abstraction. But Nature, as has 
been shown and is obvious, is nothing without corpore- 
ality. The body alone is that negativing, limiting, 
concentrating, circumscribing force, without which no 
personality is conceivable. Take away from thy per- 
sonality its body, and thou takest away that which 
holds it together. The body is the basis, the subject 
of personality. Only by the body, is a real personality 
distinguished from the imaginary one of a spectre. 
What sort of abstract, vague, empty personalities 
should we be, if we had not the property of impenetra- 
bility, — if in the same place, in the same form in which 
we are, others might stand at the same time ? Only 
by the exclusion of others from the space it occupies, 
does personality prove itself to be real. But a body 
does not exist without flesh and blood. Flesh and 
blood is life, and life alone is corporeal reality. But 
flesh and blood is nothing without the oxygen of sexual 
distinction. The distinction of sex is not superficial, 
or limited to certain parts of the body ; it is an essen- 
tial one : it penetrates bones and marrow. The sub- 
stance of man, is manhood ; that of woman, woman- 
hood. However spiritual and super-sensual the man 
may be, he remains always a mar. ; and it is the same 



128 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

with the woman. Hence personality is nothing with- 
out distinction of sex ; personality is essentially dis- 
tinguished into masculine and feminine. Where there 
is no thou, there is no /; but the distinctinction bet- 
ween J and thou, the fundamental condition of all per- 
sonality, of all consciousness, is only real, living, 
ardent' when felt as the distinction between man and 
woman. The thou between man and woman has quite 
another sound, than the monotonous thou between 
friends. 

Xature in distinction from personality can signify 
nothing else than difference of sex. A personal being 
apart from Xature is nothing else than a being without 
sex, and conversely. Xature is said to be predicated 
of God, "in the sense in which it is said of a man, 
that he is of a strong, healthy nature." But what is 
more feeble, what more insupportable, what more con- 
trary to Xature than a person without sex, or a person, 
who in character, manners, or feelings, denies sex? 
What is virtue, the excellence of man as man ? Man- 
hood. Of man as woman? Womanhood. But man 
exists only as man and woman. The strength, the 
healthiness of man, consists therefore in this : that as 
a woman, he be truly woman : as man. truly man. Thou 
repudiatest " the horror of all that is real, which sup- 
poses the spiritual to be polluted by contact with the 
real."' Repudiate then before all, thy own horror for 
the distinction of sex. If God is not polluted by Xa- 
ture, neither is he polluted by being associated witli 
the idea of sex. In renouncing sex, thou renouncest 
thy whole principle. A moral God apart from Xature 
is without basis : but the basis of morality is the dis- 
tinction of sex. Even the brute is capable of self-sacri- 
ficing love in virtue of the sexual distinction. All the 
glory of Xature. all it- power, all its wisdom and pro- 
fundity, concentrates and individualize- itself in dis- 
tinction of sex. Why then dost thou shrink from nam- 
ing the nature of God by its true name? Evidently, 
only because thou hast a general horror of things in 



THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 129 

their truth and reality ; because thou lookest at all 
things through the deceptive vapours of mysticism. 
For this very reason then, because Nature in God is 
only a delusive, unsubstantial appearance, a fantastic 
ghost of Nature, — for it is based, as we have said, not 
on flesh and blood, not on a real ground, — this attempt 
to establish a personal God is once more a failure, and 
I, too, conclude with the words, " the denial of a per- 
sonal God will be scientific honesty": — and, I add, 
scientific truth, so long as it is not declared and shown 
in unequivocal terms, first a priori, on speculative 
grounds, that form, place, corporeality, and sex, do 
not contradict the idea of the Godhead ; and secondly, 
a posteriori, — for the reality of a personal being, is 
sustained only on empirical grounds, — what sort of 
form God has, where he exists, — in heaven, — and lastly, 
of what sex he is. 

Let the profound, speculative religious philosophers 
of Germany courageously shake off the embarrassing 
remnant of rationalism which yet clings to them, in 
flagrant contradiction with their true character ; and 
let them complete their system, by converting the 
mystical " potence " of Nature in God into a really 
powerful, generating God. 

The doctrine of Nature in God is borrowed from 
Jacob Boehme. But in the original it has a far deeper 
and more interesting significance, than in its second 
modernized and emasculated edition. Jacob Boehme 
has a profoundly religious mind. Religion is the centre 
of his life and thought. But at the same time, the 
significance which has been given to Nature in modern 
times — by the study of natural science, by Spinozism, 
materialism, empiricism — has taken possession of his 
religious sentiment. He has opened his senses to Na- 
ture, thrown a glance into her mysterious being ; but 
it alarms him ; and he cannot harmonize this terror at 
Nature with his religious conceptions. " When I 
looked into the great depths of this world, and at the 
sun and stars, also at the clouds, also at the rain and 

f3 



130 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

snow, and considered in my mind the whole creation 
of this world : then I found in all things evil and good, 
love and anger. — in unreasoning things, such as wood, 
stone, earth, and the elements, as well as in men and 

beasts But because I found that in all 

things there was good and evil, in the elements as 
well as in the creatures, and that it goes as well in the 
world with the godless as with the pious, also that the 
barbarous nations possess the best lands, and have more 
prosperity than the godly : I was therefore altogether 
melancholy and extremely troubled, and the Scriptures 
could not console me, though almost all well known 
to me ; and therewith assuredly the devil was not idle, 
for he often thrust upon me heathenish thoughts, of 
which I will here be silent. "* But while his mind 
seized with fearful earnestness the dark side of Nature, 
which did not harmonize with the religious idea of a 
heavenly Creator, he was on the other hand raptur- 
ously affected by her resplendent aspects. Jacob 
Boehme has a sense for nature. He preconceives, nay, 
he feels the joys of the mineralogist, of the botanist, of 
the chemist — the joys of " godless Natural science. V 
He is enraptured by the splendour of jewels, the tones 
of metals, the hues and odours of plants, the beauty 
and gentleness of many animals. In another place, 
speaking of the revelation of God in the phenomena 
of light, the process by which ;; there arises in the God- 
head the wondrous and beautiful structure of the 
heavens in various colours and kinds, and every spirit 
shows itself in its form specially/' he .-ays, u I can com- 
pare it with nothing but with the noblest precious 
stones, such as the ruby, emerald, epidote, onyx, sapphire, 
diamond, jasper, hyacinth, amethyst, beryl, sardine, 
carbuncle, and the like." Elsewhere: "But regard- 
ing the precious .-tone;, such as the carbuncle, ruby, 
emerald, epidote, onyx, and the like, which are the 
very best, these have the very same origin — the flash 

* Keruhafter AmtfOg I. Btfhme: Amsterdam, ] 718, 

p. 58. 



THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 131 

of light in love. For that flash is born in tenderness, 
and is the heart in the centre of the Fountain-spirit, 
wherefore those stones also are mild, powerful, and 
lovely. 77 It is evident that Jacob Boehme had no bad 
taste in mineralogy ; that he had delight in flowers 
also, and consequently a faculty for botany, is proved 
by the following passages among others : — " The hea- 
venly powers gave birth to heavenly joy-giving fruits 
and colours, to all sorts of trees and shrubs, whereupon 
grows the beauteous and lovely fruit of life : also there 
spring up in these powers all sorts of flowers with 
beauteous heavenly colours and scents. Their taste is 
various, in each according to its quality and kind, al- 
together holy, divine, and joy-giving.' 7 "If thou de- 
sirest to contemplate the heavenly, divine pomp and 
glory, as they are, and to know what sort of products, 
pleasure, or joys there are above : look diligently at 
this world, at the varieties of fruits and plants that 
grow upon the earth, — trees, shrubs, vegetables, roots, 
flowers, oils, wines, corn, and everything that is there, 
and that thy heart can search out. All this is an 
image of the heavenly pomp. 77 * 

A despotic fiat could not suffice as an explanation 
of the origin of Nature to Jacob Boehme ; Nature 
appealed too strongly to his senses, and lay too near 
his heart ; hence he sought for a natural explanation 
of Nature ; but he necessarily found no other ground 
of explanation than those qualities of Nature w T hich 
made the strongest impression on him. Jacob Boehme 
— this is his essential character — is a mystical natural 
philosopher, a theosophic Vulcanist and Neptunist,t 
for according to him, " all things had their origin in 
fire and water. " Nature had fascinated Jacob 7 s re- 

* L. c. p. 480, 338, 340, 323. 

f The Philosophus teutonicus walked physically as well as mentally on 
volcanic ground. " The town of Gorlitz is paved throughout with pure 
basalt." — Charpentier, Mineral. Geographie der Chursachsischen Lande, 
p. 19. 



132 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

ligious sentiments, — not in vain did he receive his 
mystical light from the shining of tin utensils ; but the 
religious sentiment works only within itself ; it has 
not the force, not the courage, to press forward to the 
examination of things in their reality ; it looks at all 
things through the medium of religion, it sees all in 
God, L e., in the entrancing, soul-possessing splendour 
of the imagination, it sees all in images and as an 
image. But Nature affected his mind in an opposite 
manner ; hence he must place this opposition in God 
himself, — for the supposition of two independently 
existing, opposite, original principles would have 
afflicted his religious sentiment : — he must distinguish 
in God himself, a gentle, beneficent element, and a 
fierce consuming one. Everything fiery, bitter, harsh, 
contracting, dark, cold, comes from a divine harshness 
and bitterness ; everything mild, lustrous, warming, 
tender, soft, yielding, from a mild, soft, luminous 
quality in God. " Thus are the creatures on the earth, 
in the water, and in the air, each creature out of its 
own science, out of good and evil .... As one sees 
before one's eyes that there are good and evil crea- 
tures ; as venomous beasts and serpents from the centre 
of the nature of darkness, from the power of the fierce 
quality, which only want to dwell in darkness, abiding 
in caves and hiding themselves from the sun. By each 
animal's food and dwelling we see whence they have 
sprung, for every creature needs to dwell with its 
mother, and yearns after her, as is plain to the sight.' 7 
u Gold, silver, precious stones, and all bright metal, 
has its origin in the light, which appeared before the 
times of anger/ 7 &c. " Everything which in the sub- 
stance of this world is yielding, Boft, and thin, is flow- 
ing, and gives itself forth, and the ground and origin 
of it is in the eternal Unity, for unity ever flows forth 
from itself:"- for in the nature of things not dense, as 
water and air, we can understand no susceptibility or 

i~ * !,. c. p. 4G8, $17, 018. 



THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 133 

pain, they being one in themselves. In short, heaven 
is as rich as the earth. Everything that is on this 
earth, is in heaven,* all that is in Nature is in God. 
But in the latter it is divine, heavenly ; in the former, 
earthly, visible, external, material, but yet the same." 
" When I write of trees, shrubs and fruits, thou must 
not understand me of earthly things, such as are in 
this world ; for it is not my meaning, that in heaven 
there grows a dead, hard, wooden tree, or a stone of 
earthly qualities. No : my meaning is heavenly and 
spiritual, but yet truthful and literal ; thus, I mean no 
other things than what I write in the letters of the 
alphabet ; i. e., in heaven there are the same trees and 
flowers, but the trees in heaven are the trees which 
bloom and exhale in my imagination, without making 
coarse material impressions upon me ; the trees on 
earth are the trees which I perceive through my senses. 
The distinction is the distinction between imagination 
and perception. "It is not my undertaking," says 
Jacob Boehme himself, " to describe the course of all 
stars, their place and name, or how they have yearly 
their conjunction or opposition, or quadrate, or the 
like, — what they do yearly and hourly, — which through 
long years has been discovered by wise, skilful, inge- 
nious men, by diligent contemplation and observation, 
and deep thought and calculation. I have not learned 
and studied these things, and leave scholars to treat 
of them, but my undertaking is to write according to 
the spirit and thought, not according to sight."t 
The doctrine of Nature in God aims, by naturalism, 

* According to Swedenborg, the angels in heaven have clothes and 
dwellings. " Their dwellings are altogether such as the dwellings or 
houses on earth, hut far more beautiful ; there are apartments, rooms, 
and sleeping chambers therein in great number, and entrance-courts, and 
round about gardens, flowers, meadows, and fields." (E. v. S. auserlesene 
Schriften, 1 Th. Frankf. a. M. 1776, p. 190, and 96.) Thus to the 
mystic this world is the other world ; but for that reason the other world 
is this world. 

f L. c. p. 339, p. 69. 



134 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

to establish theism, especially the theism which regards 
the Supreme Being as a personal being. But personal 
theism conceives God as a personal being, separate 
from all material things : it excludes from him all de- 
velopment, because that is nothing else than the self- 
separation of a being from circumstances and condi- 
tions which do not correspond to its true idea. And 
this does not take place in God, because in him be- 
ginning, end, middle, are not to be distinguished, — 
because he is at once what he is, is from the beginning 
what he is to be, what he can be ; he is the pure unity 
of existence and essence, reality and idea, act and will. 
Deus suum esse est. Herein theism accords with the 
essence of religion. All religions, however positive 
they may be. rest on abstraction ; they are distinguished 
only in that form which the abstraction is made. Even 
the Homeric gods, with all their living strength and 
likeness to man, are abstract forms ; they have bodies, 
like men, but bodies from which the limitations and 
difficulties of the human body are eliminated. The 
idea of a divine being is essentially an abstracted, dis- 
tilled idea. It is obvious that this abstraction is no 
arbitrary one, but is determined by the essential stand- 
point of man. As he is, as he thinks, so does he make 
his abstraction. 

The abstraction expresses a judgment, — an affirma- 
tive and a negative one at the same time, praise and 
blame. What man praises and approves, that is God 
to him ;* what he blames, condemns, is the non-divine. 
Religion is & judgment. The most essential condition 
in religion — in the idea of the divine being — is accor- 
dingly the discrimination of the praiseworthy from 
the blameworthy, of the perfect from the imperfect : 
in a word, of the positive from the negative. The 
cultus itself consists in nothing else than in the con- 
tinual renewal of the origin of religion — a solemnizing 



* u Qnidqoid enim niraa qnisque roper csetera edit : hoc illi Deus est.* 1 
— Origine* Explan. in Epitt i'auli ad liom. c. L 



THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 135 

of the critical discrimination between the divine and 
the non-divine. 

The Divine Being is the human being glorified by 
the death of abstraction ; it is the departed spirit of 
man. In religion man frees himself from the limits of 
life ; he here lets fall what oppresses him, obstructs 
him, affects him repulsively ; God is the self-conscious- 
ness of man freed from all discordant elements ; man 
feels himself free, happy, blessed in his religion, be- 
cause he only here lives the life of genius, and keeps 
holiday. The basis of the divine idea lies for him 
outside of that idea itself; its truth lies in the prior 
judgment, in the fact that all which he excludes from 
God is previously judged by him to be non-divine, and 
what is non-divine to be worthless, nothing. If he 
were to include the attaining of this idea in the idea 
itself, it would lose its most essential significance, its 
true value, its beatifying charm. The divine being is 
the pure subjectivity of man, freed from all else, from 
every thing objective, having relation only to itself, 
enjoying only itself, reverencing only itself — his most 
subjective, his inmost self. The process of discrimin- 
ation, the separating of the intelligent from the non- 
intelligent, of personality from nature, of the perfect 
from the imperfect, necessarily therefore takes place 
in the subject, not in the object, and the idea of God 
lies not at the beginning but at the end of sensible 
existence, of the world, of Nature. "Where Nature 
ceases, God begins,"'' because God is the ne plus ultra, 
the last limit of abstraction. That from which I can 
no longer abstract is God, the last thought which I 
am capable of grasping — the last, i. e., the highest. 
Id quo nihil majus cogitari potest, Deus est. That this 
Omega of sensible existence becomes an Alpha also, 
is easily comprehensible ; but the essential point is, 
that he is the Omega. The Alpha is primarily a con- 
sequence ; because God is the last or highest, he is also 
the first. And this predicate — the first Being, has by 
no means immediately a cosmogonic significance, but 



136 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

only implies the highest rank. The creation in the 
Mosaic religion has for its end to secure to Jehovah 
the predicate of the highest and first, the true and ex- 
clusive God in opposition to idols. 

The effort to establish the personality of God through 
Nature, has therefore at its foundation an illegitimate, 
profane mingling of philosophy and religion, a com- 
plete absence of criticism and knowledge concerning 
the genesis of the personal God. Where personality 
is held the essential attribute of God, where it is said 
— an impersonal God is no God ; there personality is 
held to be in and by itself the highest and most real 
thing, there it is presupposed that everything which 
is not a person is dead, is nothing, that only personal 
existence is real, absolute existence, is life and truth : 
— but Xature is impersonal, and is therefore a trivial 
thing. The truth of personality rests only on the un- 
truth of Xature. To predicate personality of God is 
nothing else than to declare personality as the absolute 
essence : but personality is only conceived in distinc- 
tion, in abstraction from Xature. Certainly a merely 
personal God is an abstract God ; but so he ought to 
be — that is involved in the idea of him ; for he is no- 
thing else than the personal nature of man positing 
itself out of all connexion with the world, making it- 
self free from all dependence on nature. In the per- 
sonality of God man consecrates the supernaturalness, 
immortality, independence, unlimitedness of his own 
personality. 

In general, the need of a personal God has its foun- 
dation in this, that only in the attribute of personality 
does the personal man meet with himself, find him- 
self. Substance, pure spirit, mere reason, does not 
Batisfy him, is too abstract for him, i. e., does not ox- 
- himself, does no1 lead him back to himself. And 
man is content, happy, only when he is with himself, 
with his own nature. Hence, the more personal a 
man is. the stronger is his need of a personal God. 
The free, abstract thinker knows nothing higher than 



THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 137 

freedom ; he does not need to attach it to a personal 
being ; for him freedom in itself, as such, is a real 
positive thing. A mathematical, astronomical mind, 
a man of pure understanding, an objective man, who 
is not shut up in himself, who feels free and happy 
only in the contemplation of objective rational rela- 
tions, in the reason which lies in things in themselves 
— such a man will regard the substance of Spinoza, or 
some similar idea, as his highest being, and be full of 
antipathy towards a personal, i. e., subjective God. 
Jacobi therefore was a classic philosopher, because (in 
this respect, at least) he was consistent, he was at 
unity with himself; as was his God, so was his philo- 
sophy — personal, subjective. The personal God can- 
not be established otherwise than as he is established 
by Jacobi and his disciples. Personality is proved 
only in a personal manner. 

Personality may be, nay, must be, founded on a na- 
tural basis ; but this natural basis is attained only 
when I cease to grope in the darkness of mysticism, 
when I step forth into the clear daylight of real Na- 
ture, and exchange the idea of the personal God for 
the idea of personality in general. But into the idea 
of the personal God, the positive idea of whom is 
liberated, disembodied personality, released from the 
limiting force of Nature, to smuggle again this very 
Nature, is as perverse as if I were to mix Brunswick 
mum with the nectar of the gods, in order to give the 
ethereal beverage a solid foundation. Certainly the 
ingredients of animal blood are not to be derived from 
the celestial juice which nourishes the gods. But the 
flower of sublimation arises only through the evapora- 
tion of matter ; why, then, wilt thou mix with the sub- 
limate that very matter from which thou hast disen- 
gaged it? Certainly, the impersonal existence of 
Nature is not to be explained by the idea of persona- 
lity ; but where personality is a truth, or, rather, the 
absolute truth, Nature has no positive significance, 
and consequently no positive basis. The literal crea- 



138 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

tion out of nothing is here the only sufficient ground 
of explanation ; for it simply says this : Nature is 
nothing ; — and this precisely expresses the signifi- 
cance Trhich Nature has for absolute personality. 



THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. 139 



CHAPTER X. 

THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE, AND CREATION 
OUT OF NOTHING. 

Creation is the spoken word of God ; the creative, 
cosmogonic fiat is the tacit word, identical with the 
thought. To speak is an act of the will ; thus, crea- 
tion is the product of the Will : as in the Word of 
God man affirms the divinity of the human word, so in 
creation he affirms the divinity of the Will : not, how- 
ever, the will of the reason, but the will of the imagin- 
ation — the absolutely subjective, unlimited will. The 
culminating point of the principle of subjectivity 
is creation out of nothing."' As the eternity of the 
world or of matter imports nothing further than the 
essentiality of matter, so the creation of the world out 
of nothing imports simply the non-essentiality, the 
nothingness of the world. The commencement of 
a thing is immediately connected, in idea if not in time, 
with its end. " Lightly come, lightly go." The will 
has called it into existence — the will calls it back again 
into nothing. When? The time is indifferent: its 
existence or non-existence depends only on the will. 
But this will is not his own will :■ — not only because 
a thing cannot will its own existence, but for the prior 
reason that the world is itself destitute of will. Thus 
the nothingness of the world expresses the power of 
the will. The will that it should exist is, at the same 
time, the will — at least the possible will — that it should 

* " Quare fecit Dens coelum et terram ? Quia voluit. Voluntas enim 
Dei causa est coeli terrae et ideo major est voluntas Dei quam coelum et 
terra. Qui autem dicit : quare voluit facere coelum et terram ? majus 
aliquid quserit, quam est voluntas Dei, nihil enim majus invenire potest." 
— Augustinus de Genesi adv. Manich. 1. i. c. 2.) 



140 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

not exist. The existence of the world is therefore a 
momentary, arbitrary, unreliable, i. e., unreal exist- 
ence. 

Creation out of nothing is the highest expression 
of omnipotence : but omnipotence is nothing else than 
subjectivity exempting itself from all objective condi- 
tions and limitations, and consecrating this exemption 
as the highest power and reality : nothing else than 
the ability to posit everything real as unreal — every- 
thing conceivable as possible : nothing else than the 
power of the imagination, or of the will as identical 
with the imagination, the power of self-will.* The 
strongest and most characteristic expression of subjec- 
tive arbitrariness is, ''it has pleased;" — the phrase, 
" it has pleased God to call the world of bodies and 
spirits into existence," is the most undeniable proof 
that individual subjectivity, individual arbitrariness, 
is regarded as the highest essence — the omnipotent 
world-principle. On this ground, creation out of no- 
thing as a work of the Almighty Will falls into the 
same category with miracle, or rather it is the first 
miracle, not only in time but in rank also ; — the prin- 
ciple of which all further miracles are the spontaneous 
result. The proof of this is history itself; all mira- 
cles have been vindicated, explained, and illustrated 
by appeal to the omnipotence which created the world 
out of nothing. Why should not He who made the 
world out of nothing, make wine out of water, bring 
human speech from the mouth of an ass, and charm 
water out of a rock ? But miracle is, as we shall see 
further on, only a product and object of the imagin- 
ation, and hence creation out of nothing, as the primi- 
tive miracle, is of the same character. For this rea- 
son the doctrine of creation out of nothing has been 
pronounced a supernatural one, to which reason of it- 

* A more profound origin of the creation out of nothing lies in the 
emotional nature, as ia both directly and indirectly declared in this work. 
JJut arbitrariness is, in fact, the will of the emotions, their external inani- 
tion of force. 



THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. 141 

self could not have attained ; and in proof of this, 
appeal has been made to the fact that the Pagan phi- 
losophers represented the world to have been formed 
by the Divine Reason out of already existing matter. 
But this supernatural principle is no other than the 
principle of subjectivity, which in Christianity exalt- 
ed itself to an unlimited, universal monarchy; whereas 
the ancient philosophers were not subjective enough 
to regard the absolutely subjective being as the exclu- 
sively absolute being, because they limited subjecti- 
vity by the contemplation of the world or reality — 
because to them the world was a truth. 

Creation out of nothing, is identical with miracle, 
is one with Providence ; for the idea of Providence — 
originally, in its true religious significance, in which 
it is not yet infringed upon and limited by the unbe- 
lieving understanding — is one with the idea of mira- 
cle. The proof of Providence is miracle.* Belief in 
Providence is belief in a power to which all things 
stand at command to be used according to its plea- 
sure, in opposition to which all the power of reality 
is nothing. Providence cancels the laws of Nature ; 
it interrupts the course of necessity, the iron bond 
which inevitably binds effects to causes ; in short, it 
is the same unlimited, all powerful will, that called 
the world into existence out of nothing. Miracle is 
a creatio ex niJdh. He who turns water into wine, 
makes wine out of nothing, for the constituents of 
wine are not found in water ; otherwise, the produc- 
tion of wine would not be a miraculous, but a natural 
act. The only attestation, the only proof of Provi- 
dence is miracle. Thus Providence is an expression 
of the same idea as creation out of nothing. Creation 
out of nothing can only be understood and explained 
in connexion with Providence ; for miracle properly 
implies nothing more than that the miracle worker is 

* " Certissimnm divinae providentiae testimonium praebent miracula." 
— -H. Grotius (de Verit. Rel. Christ. 1. i. § 13). 



142 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the same as lie who brought forth all things by his 
mere will — God the Creator. 

But Providence has relation essentially to man. It 
is for man's sake that Providence makes of things 
whatever it pleases : it is for man's sake that it super- 
sedes the authority and reality of a law otherwise 
omnipotent. The admiration of Providence in Nature, 
especially in the animal kingdom, is nothing else than 
an admiration of Nature, and therefore belongs merely 
to naturalism, though to a religious naturalism ;* for 
in Nature is revealed only natural, not divine Provi- 
dence — not Providence as it is an object to religion. 
Religious Providence reveals itself only in miracles 
— especially in the miracle of the Incarnation, the 
central point of religion. But we nowhere read that 
God, for the sake of brutes, became a brute — the very 
idea of this is, in the eyes of religion, impious and un- 
godly ; or that God ever performed a miracle for the 
sake of animals or plants. On the contrary, we read 
that a poor fig-tree, because it bore no fruit at a time 
when it could not bear it, was cursed, purely in order 
to give men an example of the power of faith over 
Nature : — and again, that when the tormenting devils 
were driven out of men, they were driven into brutes. 
It is true we also read : " No sparrow falls to the 
ground without your Father ;" but these sparrows 
have no more worth and importance than the hairs on 
the head of a man, which are all numbered. 

Apart from instinct, the brute has no other guardian 
spirit, no other Providence, than its senses or its organs 
in general. A bird which loses its eyes has lost its 

* It it fame that religious naturalism, or the acknowledgment of the 

Divine in Nature, is also an element of the Christian religion, and yet 
more of the Mosaic, which was so friendly to animals. — But it is by no 
- the characteristic, the ( Christian tendency of the Christian religion. 
The Christian, the religious Providence, i- quite another than that which 
clothes tie- lilies and feeds tie- ravens. The natural Providence lets a 
man sink in the vratef, it he has not learned to swim; hut the Christian, 
the religious Providence, leads him with the hand of omnipotence over 
the water unhani 



THE MYSTERY OP PROVIDENCE. 143 

guardian angel; it necessarily goes to destruction if 
no miracle happens. We read indeed that a raven 
brought food to the prophet Elijah, but not (at least 
to my knowledge) that an animal was supported by 
other than natural means. But if a man believes that 
he also has no other Providence than the powers of 
his race — his senses and understanding, — he is in the 
eyes of religion, and of all those who speak the lan- 
guage of religion, an irreligious man ; because he be- 
lieves only in a natural Providence, and a natural 
Providence is in the eyes of religion as good as none. 
Hence Providence has relation essentially to men, and 
even among men only to the religious. " God is the 
Saviour of all men, but especially of them that be- 
lieve." It belongs, like religion, only to man ; it is 
intended to express the essential distinction of man 
from the brute, to rescue man from the tyranny of the 
forces of Nature. Jonah in the whale, Daniel in the 
den of lions, are examples of the manner in which 
Providence distinguishes (religious) men from brutes. 
If therefore the Providence which manifests itself in 
the organs with which animals catch and devour their 
prey, and which is so greatly admired by Christian 
naturalists, is a truth, the Providence of the Bible, the 
Providence of religion, is a falsehood ; and vice versa. 
What pitiable and at the same time ludicrous hypocrisy 
is the attempt to do homage to loth, to Nature and the 
the Bible at once ! How does Nature contradict the 
Bible ! How does the Bible contradict Nature ! The 
God of Nature reveals himself by giving to the lion 
strength and appropriate organs in order that, for the 
preservation of his life, he may in case of necessity 
kill and devour even a human being ; the God of the 
Bible reveals himself by interposing his own aid to 
rescue the human being from the jaws of the lion I* 
Providence is a privilege of man. It expresses the 

* In this contrast of the religions, or biblical, and the natural Provi- 
dence, the author had especially in view the vapid, narrow theology of 
the English natural philosophers. 



144 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

value of man, in distinction from other natural beings 
and things ; it exempts him from the connexion of the 
universe. Providence is the conviction of man of the 
infinite value of his existence, — a conviction in which 
he renounces faith in the reality of external things ; 
it is the idealism of religion. Faith in Providence is 
therefore identical with faith in personal immortality; 
save only, that in the latter the infinite value of exist- 
ence is expressed in relation to time, as infinite dura- 
tion. He who prefers no special claims, who is indif- 
ferent about himself, who identifies himself with the 
world, who sees himself as a part merged in the whole, 
— such a one believes in no Providence, L e., in no 
special Providence ; but only special Providence is 
Providence in the sense of religion. Faith in Provi- 
dence is faith in one's own worth, the faith of man in 
himself ; hence the beneficent consequences of this 
faith, but hence also false humility, religious arro- 
gance, which, it is true, does not rely on itself, but 
only because it commits the care of itself to the bless- 
ed God. God concerns himself about me ; he has in 
view my happiness, my salvation ; he wills that I shall 
be blest ; but that is my will also : thus, my interest 
is God's interest, my own will is God's will, my own 
aim is God's aim, — God's love for me nothing else 
than my self-love deified. Thus when I believe in 
Providence, in what do I believe but in the divine 
reality and significance of own my being? 

But where Providence is believed in, belief in God 
is made dependent on belief in Providence. He who 
denies that there is a Providence, denies that there is 
a God, or — what is the same thing — that God is God ; 
for a God who is not the Providence of man, is a con- 
temptible God, a God who is wanting in thedivinest, 
most adorable attribute. Consequently, the belief in 
God is nothing but the belief in human dignity* the 

* M Qui Decs negant, nobilitatem generis lmmani destnumt." — Bacon 
(Scrm. Fidel, 16). 



THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. 145 

belief in the absolute reality and significance of the 
human nature. But belief in a (religious) Providence 
is belief in creation out of nothing, and vice versa : 
the latter, therefore, can have no other significance 
than that of Providence as just developed, and it has 
actually no other. Religion sufficiently expresses this 
by making man the end of creation. All things exist, 
not for their own sake, but for the sake of man. He 
who, like the pious Christian naturalists, pronounces 
this to be pride, declares Christianity itself to be 
pride ; for to say that the material world exists for 
the sake of man, implies infinitely less than to say that 
God — or at least, if we follow Paul, a being who is 
almost God, scarcely to be distinguished from God — 
becomes man for the sake of men. 

But if man is the end of creation, he is also the true 
cause of creation, for the end is the principle of action. 
The distinction between man as the end of creation, 
and man as its cause, is only that the cause is the 
latent, inner man, the essential man, whereas the end 
is the self-evident, empirical, individual man, — that 
man recognises himself as the end of creation, but not 
as the cause, because he distinguishes the cause, the 
essence from himself as another personal being. * But 
this other being, this creative principle, is in fact no- 
thing else than his subjective nature separated from 
the limits of individuality and materiality, L e., of 
objectivity, unlimited will, personality posited out of 
all connexion with the world, — which by creation, L e., 

* In Clemens Alex. (Coh. ad Gentes) there is an interesting passage. It 
runs in the Latin translation (the bad Augsburgh edition, 1778) thus :— 
" At nos ante mundi constitutionem fuimus, ratione futurse nostras pro- 
ductions, in ipso. Deo quodammodo turn prasexistentes. Divini igitur 
Verbi sive Rationis, nos ereaturse rationales sumus, et per eum primi 
esse decimur, quoniam in principio erat verbmn." Yet more decidedly, 
however, has Christian mysticism declared the human nature to be the 
creative principle, the ground of the world. " Man, who, before time 
was, existed in eternity, works with God all the works that God wrought 
a thousand years ago, and now, after a thousand years, still works." 
"All creatures have sprung forth through man." — Predigten, vor u. zii 
Tauleri Zeiten. (Ed. c. p. 5. p. 119.) 

G 



146 THE ESSENCE OP CHRISTIANITY. 

the positing of the world, of objectivity, of another, as 
a dependent, finite, non-essential existence, gives itself 
the certainty of its exclusive reality. The point in 
question in the Creation is not the truth and reality 
of the world, but the truth and reality of personality, 
of subjectivity in distinction from the world. The 
point in question is the personality of God ; but the 
personality of God is the personality of man freed 
from all the conditions and limitations of Nature. Hence 
the fervent interest in the Creation, the horror of all 
pantheistic cosmogonies. The Creation, like the idea 
of a personal God in general, is not a scientific, but a 
personal matter ; not an object of the free intelligence, 
but of the feelings ; for the point on which it hinges 
is only the guarantee, the last conceivable proof and 
demonstration of personality or subjectivity as an 
essence quite apart, having nothing in common with 
Nature, a supra-and extramundane entity.* 

Man distinguishes himself from Nature. This dis- 
tinction of his is his God : the distinguishing of God 
from Nature is nothing else than the distinguishing of 
man from Nature. The antithesis of pantheism and 
personalism resolves itself into the question : is the 
nature of man transcendental or immanent, supra- 
naturalistic or naturalistic ? The speculations and con- 
troversies concerning the personality or impersonality 
of God are therefore fruitless, idle uncritical, and 
odious ; for the speculatists, especially those who 
maintain the personality, do not call the thing by the 
right name ; they put the light under a bushel. While 
they in truth speculate only concerning themselves, 
only in the interest of their own instinct of self-pre- 
servation ; they yet will not allow that they are split- 
ting their brains only about themselves ; they specu- 

* Hence is explained why all attempts of speculative theology and of 
its kindred philosophy to make the transition from God to the world, or 
to derive the world from God, have failed and must fn.il. Namely, he- 
canae they are fundamentally false, from being made in ignorance of tho 
idea on which the Creation really turns. 



THE MYSTERY OP PROVIDENCE. 147 

late under the delusion that they are searching out 
the mysteries of another being. Pantheism identifies 
man with Nature, whether with its visible appear- 
ance, or its abstract essence, Personalism isolates, 
separates him from Nature ; converts him from a part 
into the whole, into an absolute essence by himself. 
This is the distinction. If, therefore, you would be 
clear on these subjects, exchange your mystical, per- 
verted anthropology, which you call theology, for real 
anthropology, and speculate in the light of conscious- 
ness and Nature concerning the difference or identity 
of the human essence with the essence of Nature. You 
yourselves admit that the essence of the pantheistical 
God is nothing but the essence of Nature. Why, then, 
will you only see the mote in the eyes of your oppo- 
nents, and not observe the very obvious beam in your 
own eyes ? why make yourselves an exception to a 
universally valid law ? Admit that your personal God 
is nothing else than your own personal nature, that 
while you believe in and construct your supra-and 
extra-natural God, you believe in and construct no- 
thing else than the supra-and extranaturalism of your 
own self. 

In the Creation, as everywhere else, the true prin- 
ciple is concealed by the intermingling of universal, 
metaphysical, and even pantheistic definitions. But 
one need only be attentive to the closer definitions to 
convince oneself that the true principle of creation is 
the self-affirmation of subjectivity in distinction from 
Nature. God produces the world outside himself; at 
first it is only an idea, a plan, a resolve ; now it be- 
comes an act, and therewith it steps forth out of God 
as a distinct and, relatively at least, a self-subsistent 
object. But just so subjectivity in general, which 
distinguishes itself from the world, which takes itself 
for an essence distinct from the world, posits the world 
out of itself as a separate existence, indeed, this posit- 
ing out of self, and the distinguishing of self, is one 
act. When therefore the world is posited outside of 
g2 



148 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

God, God is posited by himself, is distinguished from 
the world. What else then is God but your subjec- 
tive nature, when the world is separated from it?* It 
is true that when astute reflection intervenes, the dis- 
tinction between extra and intra is disavowed as a 
finite and human (?) distinction. But to the dis- 
avowal by the understanding, which in relation to re- 
ligion is pure misunderstanding, no credit is due. If 
it is meant seriously, it destroys the foundation of the 
religious consciousness ; it does away with the possi- 
bility, the very principle of the creation, for this rests 
solely on the reality of the above mentioned distinc- 
tion. Moreover, the effect of the creation, all its 
majesty for the feelings and the imagination, is quite 
lost, if the production of the world out of God is not 
taken in the real sense. What is it to make, to create, 
to produce, but to make that which in the first in- 
stance is only subjective, and so far invisible, non- 
existent, into something objective, perceptible, so that 
other beings besides me may know and enjoy it, and 
thus to put something out of myself, to make it dis- 
tinct from myself? Where there is no reality or pos- 
sibility of an existence external to me, there can be 
no question of making or creating. God is eternal, 
but the world had a commencement ; God was, when 
as yet the world was not ; God is invisible, not cogni- 
zable by the senses, but the world is visible, palpable, 
material, and therefore outside of God ; for how can 
the material as such, body, matter, be in God ? The 

* It is not admissible to urge against this the omnipresence of God, 

of God in all things, or the existence of things in God. 

J or, apart from the consideration that the future destruction of the 

world expresses clearly enough its existence outside of God, i. e., its non- 

divinenesa, <;•><! i*- in a tpecial manner only in man; but I am at home 

only where I am tpeciaUytt home. "Nowhere is God properly (rod, but 

in the bouL Iii all creatures then- i< something ol God : but in the soul 

completely, for it U bis resting-place." — Predigten etzlicher 

p, 19. And the existence of things in God, especially where 

il has do pantheistic significance) and any such is here excluded, is 

equally an idea without reality, ana Kpress the Special senti- 

of religion. 



THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. 149 

world exists outside of God, in the same sense in which 
a tree, an animal, the world in general, exists outside 
of my conception, outside of myself, is an existence 
distinct from subjectivity. Hence, only when such 
an external existence is admitted, as it was by the 
older philosophers and theologians, have we the genuine, 
unmixed doctrine of the religious consciousness. The 
speculative theologians and philosophers of modern 
times, on the contrary, foist in all sorts of pantheistic 
definitions, although they deny the principle of pan- 
theism ; and the result of this process is simply an abso- 
lutely self-contradictory, insupportable fabrication of 
their own. 

Thus the creation of the world expresses nothing 
else than subjectivity, assuring itself of its own reality 
and infinity through the consciousness that the world 
is created, is a product of will, i. e., a dependent, 
powerless, unsubstantial existence. The " nothing" 
out of which the world was produced, is a still inhe- 
rent nothingness. When thou sayest the world was 
made out of nothing, thou conceivest the world itself 
as nothing, thou clearest away from thy head all the 
limits to thy imagination, to thy feelings, to thy will, 
for the world is the limitation of thy will, of thy desire ; 
the world alone obstructs thy soul ; it alone is the wall 
of separation between thee and God, — thy beatified, 
perfected nature. Thus, subjectively, thy annihilatest 
the world ; thou thinkest God by himself, i. e., abso- 
lutely unlimited subjectivity, the subjectivity or soul 
which enjoys itself alone, which needs not the world, 
which knows nothing of the painful bonds of matter. 
In the inmost depths of thy soul thou wouldest rather 
there were no world, for where the world is, there is 
matter, and where there is matter there is weight and 
resistance, space and time, limitation and necessity. 
Nevertheless, there is a world, there is matter. How 
dost thou escape from the dilemma of this contradic- 
tion ? How dost thou expel the world from thy con- 
sciousness, that it may not disturb thee in the beati- 



150 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

tude of the unlimited soul ? Only by making the world 
itself a product of will, by giving it an arbitrary exist- 
ence always hovering between existence and non- 
existence, always awaiting its annihilation. Certainly 
the act of creation does not suffice to explain the exist- 
ence of the world or matter (the two are not separa- 
ble), but it is a total misconception to demand this of it, 
for the fundamental idea of the creation is this : there 
is to be no world, no matter ; and hence its end is 
daily looked forward to with longing. The world in 
its truth does not here exist at all, it is regarded only 
as the obstruction, the limitation of subjectivity ; how 
could the world in its truth and reality be deduced 
from a principle which denies the world? 

In order to recognise the above developed signi- 
ficance of the creation as the true one, it is only ne- 
cessary seriously to consider the fact, that the chief 
point in the creation is not the production of earth 
and water, plants and animals, for which indeed there 
is no God, but the production of personal beings — of 
spirits, according to the ordinary phrase. God is the 
idea of personality as itself a person, subjectivity exist- 
ing in itself apart from the world, existing for self 
alone, without wants, posited as absolute existence, 
the me without a thee. But as absolute existence for 
self alone contradicts the idea of true life, the idea of 
love ; as self-consciousness is essentially united with 
the consciousness of a thee, as solitude cannot, at least 
in perpetuity, preserve itself from tedium and unifor- 
mity ; thought immediately proceeds from the divine 
Being to other conscious beings, and expands the idea 
of personality which was at first condensed in one 
being to a plurality of persons." x " If the person is con- 
ceived physically, as a real man, in which form he is 
a being with wants, he appears first at the end of the 
physical world, when the conditions of his existence 

* Here is also the point where the Creation represents to us not only 
the Divine power, trot also the Divine love. " Quia bonus est (Dens), 

euinus." (Augustin.) In the beginning, before the world, God WAS 



THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. 151 

are present, — as the goal of creation. If, on the other 
hand, man is conceived abstractly as a person, as is 
the case in religious speculation, this circuit is dispen- 
sed with, and the task is the direct deduction of the 
person, L e. r the self-demonstration, the ultimate self- 
verification of the human personality. It is true that 
the divine personality is distinguished in every possi- 
ble way from the human in order to veil their iden- 
tity ; but these distinctions are either purely fantastic, 
or they are mere assertions, devices which exhibit the 
invalidity of the attempted deduction. All positive 
grounds of the creation reduce themselves only to the 
conditions, to the grounds, which urge upon the me 
the consciousness of the necessity of another personal 
being. Speculate as much as you will, you will never 
derive your personality from God, if you have not be- 
forehand introduced it, if God himself be not already 
the idea of your personality, your own subjective 
nature. 

alone. " Ante omnia Dens erat solns, ipsi sibi et mnndnslocns et omnia. 
Solns autem ; qnia nihil extrinsecus prseter ipsnm. (Tertullian.) But 
there is no higher happiness than to make another happy, bliss lies in 
the act of imparting. And only joy, only love imparts. Hence man 
conceives imparting love as the principle of existence. " Extasis boni 
non sinit ipsum manere in se ipso." (Dionysius A.) Everything posi- 
tive establishes, attests itself, only by itself. The divine love is the joy 
of life, establishing itself, affirming itself. But the highest self-conscious- 
ness of life, the supreme joy of life is the love which confers happiness. 
God is the bliss of existence. 



152 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION IN 
JUDAISM. 



The doctrine of the Creation sprang out of Judaism ; 
indeed, it is the characteristic, the fundamental doc- 
trine of the Jewish religion. The principle which lies 
at its foundation is, however, not so much the principle 
of subjectivity as of egoism. The doctrine of the 
Creation in its characteristic significance arises only 
on that stand-point where man in practice makes Na- 
ture merely the servant of his will and needs, and hence 
in thought also degrades it to a mere machine, a pro- 
duct of the will. Now its existence is intelligible to 
him, since he explains and interprets it out of himself, 
in accordance with his own feelings and notions. The 
question, Whence is Nature or the world ? presupposes 
wonder that it exists, or the question, Why does it 
exist? But this wonder, this question, arises only 
where man has separated himself from Nature and 
made it a mere object of will. The author of the Book 
of Wisdom says truly of the heathens, that, "for ad- 
miration of the beauty of the world they did not raise 
themselves to the idea of the Creator." To him who 
feels that Nature is lovely, it appears an end in itself, 
it has the ground of its existence in itself: in him the 
question, Why does it exist? docs not arise. Nature 
and God are identified in his consciousness, his per- 
ception, of the world. Nature, as it impresses his 
senses, has indeed had an origin, lias been produced, 
but not created in the religious sense, is not an arbi- 
trary product. And by this origin lie implies nothing 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION. 153 

evil ; originating involves for him nothing impure, un- 
divine ; he conceives his gods themselves as having 
had an origin. The generative force is to him the 
primal force : he posits, therefore, as the ground of 
Nature, a force of Nature,— a real, present, visibly- 
active force, as the ground of reality. Thus does man 
think where his relation to the world is aesthetic or 
theoretic, (for the theoretic view was originally the 
aesthetic view, the prima pMlosopliia) where the idea 
of the world is to him the idea of the Cosmos, of ma- 
jesty, of deity itself. Only where such a theory was 
the fundamental principle could there be conceived 
and expressed such a thought as that of Anaxagoras : 
— man is born to behold the world. * The stand-point 
of theory is the stand-point of harmony with the world. 
The subjective activity, that in which man contents 
himself, allows himself free play, is here the sensuous 
imagination alone. Satisfied with this, he lets Nature 
subsist in peace, and constructs his castles in the air, 
his poetical cosmogonies, only out of natural materials. 
When, on the contrary, man places himself only on the 
practical stand-point and looks at the world from 
thence, making the practical stand-point the theoreti- 
cal one also, he is in disunion with Nature ; he makes 
Nature the abject vassal of his selfish interest, of his 
practical egoism. The theoretic expression of this 
egoistical, practical view, according to which Nature 
is in itself nothing, is this : Nature or the world is 
made, created, the product of a command. God said, 
Let the world be, and straightway the world presented 
itself at His bidding.t 

* In Diogenes (L. 1. ii. c. iii. § 6), it is literally, "for the contempla- 
tion of the sun, the moon and the heavens." Similar ideas were held by- 
other philosophers. Thus the Stoics also said : — " Ipse autem homo ortus 
est ad mundum contemplandum et imitandum." — Cic. (de Nat.) 

f " Hebrsei numen verbo quidquid videtur efficiens describunt et quasi 
imperio omnia creata tradunt, ut facilitatem in eo quod vult efficiendo, 
summamque ejus in omnia potentiam ostendant." — Ps. xxxiii. 6. "Verbo 
Jehovse coeli facti sunt." — Ps. cxlviii. 5. "Ille jussit eaque creata sunt." 
— J. Clericus (Comment, in Mosem. Genes, i. 3). 

g3 



154 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Utilism is the essential theory of Judaism. The 
belief in a special Divine Providence is the character- 
istic belief of Judaism ; belief in Providence is belief 
in miracle ; but belief in miracle exists where Xature 
is regarded only as an object of arbitrariness, of 
egoism, which uses Xature only as an instrument of 
its own will and pleasure. "Water divides or rolls it- 
self together like a firm mass, dust is changed into 
lice, a staff into a serpent, rivers into blood, a rock 
into a fountain ; in the same place it is both light and 
dark at once, the sun now stands still, now goes back- 
ward. And all these contradictions of Xature happen 
for the welfare of Israel, purely at the command of 
Jehovah, who troubles himself about nothing but Israel, 
who is nothing but the personified selfishness of the 
Israelitish people, to the exclusion of all other nations, 
- — absolute intolerance, the secret essence of mono- 
theism. 

The Greeks looked at Xature with the theoretic 
sense ; they hoard heavenly music in the harmonious 
course of the stars : they saw Xature rise from the 
foam of the all producing ocean as Venus Anadyomene. 
The Israelites, on the contrary, opened to Xature only 
the gastric sense : their taste for Xature lay only in the 
palate : their consciousness of God in eating manna. 
The Greek addicted himself to polite studies, to the 
fine arts, to philosophy : the Israelite did not rise above 
the alimentary view of theology. "At even ye shall 
eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with 
bread; and ye shall know that I am the Lord your 
God."* "And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, 'If God 
will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I 
go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put 
on. BO that 1 come again to my father's house in peace, 
than shall the Lord be my Qod/'t Kating is the most 
solemn act or the initation of the Jewish religion. In 
eating the Israelite celebrates and renews the act of 

* Exod. xvi. 12. f (Jen. xxviii. 20. 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION. 155 

creation ; in eating man declares Nature to be an in- 
significant object. When the seventy elders ascended 
the mountain with Moses, " they saw God ; and when 
they had seen God, they ate and drank. "* Thus with 
them what the sight of the Supreme Being heightened 
was the appetite for food. 

The Jews have maintained their peculiarity to this 
day. Their principle, their God, is the most practical 
principle in the world, — namely, egoism : and more- 
over egoism in the form of religion. Egoism is the 
God who will not let his servants come to shame. 
Egoism is essentially monotheistic, for it has only 
one, only self, as its end. Egoism strengthens cohesion, 
concentrates man on himself, gives him a consistent 
principle of life ; but it makes him theoretically narrow, 
because indifferent to all which does not relate to the 
well-being of self. Hence science, like art, arises only 
out of polytheism, for polytheism is the frank, open, 
unen vying sense of all that is beautiful and good with- 
out distinction, the sense of the world, of the universe. 
The Greeks looked abroad into the wide world that 
they might extend their sphere of vision ; the Jews 
to this day pray with their faces turned towards Jeru- 
salem. In the Israelites, monotheistic egoism excluded 
the free theoretic tendency. Solomon, it is true, sur- 
passed " all the children of the east" in understanding 
and wisdom, and spoke (treated, agebat) moreover "of 
trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon, even unto the 
hyssop that springeth out of the wall/ 7 and also of 
" beasts and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of 
fishes" (1 Kings iv. 30, 34). But it must be added 
that Solomon did not serve Jehovah with his whole 
heart; he did homage to strange gods and strange 
women ; and thus he had the polytheistic sentiment 
and taste. The polytheistic sentiment, I repeat, is the 
foundation of science and art. 

The significance which nature in general had for 

* Exod. xxiv. 10, 11. " Tantum abest ut mortui sint, ut contra con- 
vivium hilares celebrarint." — Clericus. 



156 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the Hebrews is one with their idea of its origin. The 
mode in which the genesis of a thing is explained is 
the candid expression of opinion, of sentiment respect- 
ing it. If it be thought meanly of, so also is its origin. 
Men used to suppose that insects, vermin, sprang from 
carrion, and other rubbish. It was not because they 
derived vermin from so uninviting a source, that they 
thought contemptuously of them ; but, on the contrary, 
because they thought thus, because the nature of vermin 
appeared to them so vile, they imagined an origin 
corresponding to this nature, a vile origin. To the 
Jews Nature was a mere means towards achieving the 
end of egoism, a mere object of will. But the ideal, 
the idol of the egoistic will is that Will which has un- 
limited command, which requires no means in order 
to attain its end, to realize its object, which immedi- 
ately by itself, i. e., by pure will, calls into existence 
whatever it pleases. It pains the egoist that the satis- 
faction of his wishes and need is only to be attained 
immediately, that for him there is a chasm between 
the wish and its realization, between the object in the 
imagination and the object in reality. Hence, in order 
to relieve this pain, to make himself free from the 
limits of reality, he supposes as the true, the highest 
being, one who brings forth an object by the mere I 
will. For this reason, Nature, the world, was to the 
Hebrews the product of a dictatorial word, of a cate- 
gorical imperative, of a magic fiat. 

To that which has no essential existence for me in 
theory, I assign no theoretic, no positive ground. By 
referring it to Will I only enforce its theoretic nullity. 
What we despise we do not honour with a glance: 
that which is observed lias importance : contemplation 
is respect. Whatever is looked at letters by secret 
forces of attraction, overpowers, by the spell which it 
exercises upon the eye, the criminal arrogance of that 
Will which Beeks only to Bubject all things to itself. 
Whatever make.- ;ni impression on the theoretic sense, 
on the reason, withdraw s itself from the dominion of 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION. 157 

the egoistic Will : it reacts, it presents resistence. 
That which devastating egoism devotes to death, 
benignant theory restores to life. 

The much-belied doctrine of the heathen philosophers 
concerning the eternity of matter, or the world, thus 
implies nothing more than that Nature was to them a 
theoretic reality.* The heathens were idolaters, that 
is, they contempleted Nature ; they did nothing else 
than what the profoundly Christian nations do at this 
day, when they make nature an object of their admi- 
ration, of their indefatigable investigation. "But the 
heathens actually worshipped natural objects." Cer- 
tainly ; for worship is only the childish, the religious 
form of contemplation. Contemplation and worship 
are not essentially distinguished. That which I con- 
template I humble myself before, I consecrate to it my 
noblest possession, my heart, my intelligence, as an 
offering. The natural philosopher also falls on his 
knees before Nature when, at the risk of his life, he 
snatches from some precipice a lichen, an insect, or a 
stone, to glorify it in the light of contemplation, and 
give it an eternal existence in the memory of scientific 
humanity. The study of Nature is the worship of Na- 
ture — idolatry in the sense of the Israelitish and 
Christian God ; and idolatry is simply man's primitive 
contemplation of nature ; for religion is nothing else 
than man's primitive and therefore childish, popular, 
but prejudiced, unemancipated consciousness of himself 
and of Nature. The Hebrews, on the other hand, 
raised themselves from the worship of idols to the 
worship of God, from the creature to the Creator ; 
i. e., they raised themselves from the theoretic view of 
Nature, which fascinated the idolaters, to the purely 
practical view which subjects Nature only to the ends 
of egoism. "And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto 

* It is well known, however, that their opinions on this point were 
various. (See e. g. Aristoteles de Coelo, 1. i. c. 10.) But their difference 
is a subordinate one, since the creative agency itself is with them a more 
or less cosmical being. 



158 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

heaven, and when thou seest the sun, the moon, and 
the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldst be driven 
to worship them and serve them, which the Lord thy 
God hath divided unto [t. e., bestowed upon, largitus 
est] all nations under the whole heaven."* Thus, the 
creation out of nothing, i. e., the creation as a purely 
imperious act, had its origin only in the unfathomable 
depth of Hebrew egoism. 

• On this ground, also, the creation out of nothing is 
no object of philosophy ; — at least in any other way 
than it is so here ; — for it cuts away the root of all 
true speculation, presents no grappling-point to thought, 
to theory ; theoretically considered, it is a baseless air- 
built doctrine, which originated solely in the need to 
give a warrant to utilism, to egoism, which contains 
and expresses nothing but the command to make Na- 
ture — not an object of thought, of contemplation, but 
— an object of utilization. The more empty it is, how- 
ever, for natural philosophy, the more profound is its 
" speculative ' ; significance ; for just because it has no 
theoretic fulcrum, it allows to the speculatist infinite 
room for the play of arbitrary, groundless interpre- 
tation. 

It is in the history of dogma and speculation as in 
the history of states. World-old usages, laws, and in- 
stitutions, continue to drag out their existence long 
after they have lost their true meaning. What has 
once existed will not be denied the right to exist for 
ever ; what was once good, claims to be good for all 
times. At this period of superannuation come the in- 
terpreters, the speculatists, and talk of the profound 
sense, because they no longer know the true one.t 

* Dent. Lv. H>. — lt Licet enim ea, quae sunt in eoelo, non sint homimmi 
artificia, at hominum tamen gratia condita fiierunt. Ne quis igitur solem 
adoret, Bed Bolis effectorem desideret." — Clemens Alex. (Cob. ad (rentes). 

f But of course the} only do this in the ease of the "absolute religion;" 

for with regard to other reli 510ns they hold up the Ideas and customs which 

ig : to us, and of which we do not knew the original meaning and 

- and Ludicrous. And vet, in fact, to worship the urine 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION. 159 

Thus, religious speculation deals with the dogmas, 
torn from the connexion in which alone they have any 
true meaning ; instead of tracing them back critically 
to their true origin, it makes the secondary primitive, 
and the primitive secondary. To it God is the first ; 
man the second. Thus it inverts the natural order of 
things! In reality, the first is man, the second the 
nature of man made objective, namely, God. Only in 
later times, in which religion is already become flesh 
and blood, can it be said — as God is, so is man : al- 
though, indeed, this proposition never amounts to any- 
thing more than tautology. But in the origin of re- 
ligion it is otherwise ; and it is only in the origin of 
a thing that we can discern its true nature. Man first 
unconsciously and involuntarily creates God in his 
own image, and after this God consciously and volun- 
tarily creates man in his own image. This is especially 
confirmed by the development of the Israelitish reli- 
gion. Hence the position of theological one-sidedness, 
that the revelation of God holds an even pace with the 
development of the human race. Naturally ; for the 
revelation of God is nothing else than the revelation, 
the self-unfolding of human nature. The supranatura- 
listic egoism of the Jews did not proceed from the 
Creator, but conversely, the latter from the former ; 
in the creation the Israelite justified his egoism at the 
bar of his reason. 

It is true, and it may be readily understood on 
simply practical grounds, that even the Israelite could 
not, as a man, withdraw himself from the theoretic 
contemplation and admiration of Nature. But in cele- 
brating the power and greatness of Nature, he cele- 
brates only the power and greatness of Jehovah. And 
the power of Jehovah has exhibited itself with the 
most glory, in the miracles which it has wrought in 
favour of Israel. Hence, in the celebration of this 

of cows, which the Parsees and Hindoos drink that they may obtain for- 
giveness of sins, is not more ludicrous than to worship the comb or a shred 
of the garment of the Mother of God. 



160 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

power the Israelite has always reference ultimately to 
himself; he extols the greatness of Nature only for 
the same reason that the conqueror magnifies the 
strength of his opponent, in order thereby to heighten 
his own self-complacency, to make his own fame more 
illustrious. Great and mighty is Nature, which Je- 
hovah has created, but yet mightier, yet greater, is 
Israel's self-estimation. For his sake the sun stands 
still ; for his sake, according to Philo, the earth quaked 
at the delivery of the law ; in short, for his-sake all 
nature alters its course. " For the whole creature in 
his proper kind, was fashioned again anew, serving 
the peculiar commandments that were given unto them, 
that thy children might be kept without hurt. "* 
According to Philo, God gave Moses power over the 
whole of Nature ; all the elements obeyed him as the 
Lord of Nature. t Israel's requirement is the omni- 
potent law of the world, Israel's need the fate of the 
universe. Jehovah is Israel's consciousness of the sa- 
credness and necessity of his own existence, — a ne- 
cessity before which the existence of Nature, the exist- 
ence of other nations vanishes into nothing; Jehovah 
is the solus popidi. the salvation of Israel, to which 
everything that stands in its way must be sacrificed ; 
Jehovah is exclusive, monarchical arrogance, the anni- 
hilating Bash of anger in the vindictive glance of 
destroying Israel; in a word, Jehovah is the ego of 
Israel, which regards itself as the end and aim, the 
Lord of Nature. Thus, in the power of Nature the 
Israelite celebrates the power of Jehovah, and in the 
power of Jehovah the power ofhis own self-conscious- 
ness. w " Blessed be God I God is our help, God is our 
salvation. " — " Jehovah is my strength." — "Godhim- 
self hearkened to the word of Joshua, for Jehovah 
himself foughl for Israel." — "Jehovah is a God of war." 
11'. in the course of lime, the idea of Jehovah ex- 
panded itself in individual minds, and his love wan 
extended, as by the writer of the book of Jonah, to 

* WikL x\x. 6. t Sec Gfrorer's Philo. 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CKEATION. 161 

man in general, this does not belong to the esssential 
character of the Israelitish religion. The God of the 
fathers, to whom the most precious recollections are 
attached, the ancient historical God, remains always 
the foundation of a religion.* 

* We may here observe, that certainly the admiration of the power 
and glory of God in general, and so of Jehovah, as manifested in Nature, 
is in fact, though not in the consciousness of the Israelite, only admira- 
tion of the power and glory of Nature. (See, on this subject, P. Bayle, 
Ein Beitrag, $*c, p. 25 — 29.) But to prove this formally lies out of our 
plan, since we here confine ourselves to Christianity, i. e., the adoration 
of God in man (Deum colimus per Christum. Tertullian. Apolog. c. 21). 
Nevertheless, the principle of this proof is stated in the present work. 



162 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 



CHAPTER XII. 



THE OMNIPOTENCE OF FEELING, OR THE MYSTERY 
OF PRAYER. 



Israel is the historical definition of the specific nature 
of the religious consciousness, save only that here this 
consciousness was circumscribed by the limits of a 
particular, a national interest. Hence, we need only 
let these limits fall, and we have the Christian reli- 
gion. Judaism is worldly Christianity ; Christianity, 
spiritual Judaism. The Christian religion is the 
Jewish religion purified from national egoism, and yet 
at the same time it is certainly another, a new reli- 
gion ; for every reformation, every purification, pro- 
duces — especially in religious matters, where even the 
trivial beeomes important — an essential change. To 
the Jew, the Israelite was the mediator, the bond be- 
tween God and man ; in his relation to Jehovah he 
relied on his character of Israelite ; Jehovah himself 
was nothing else than the self-consciousness of Israel 
made objective as the absolute being, the national 
conscience, the universal law, the central point of the 
political system.* If we let fall the limits of nation- 
ality, we obtain — instead of the Israelite — man. As 
in Jehovah the Israelite personified his national exist- 
ence, so in God the Christian personified his subjec- 
tive human nature, freed from the limits of nationality. 
As Israel made the wants of his national existence the 
law of the world, as, under the dominance of these 
wants, he deified even his political vindictiveness : so 

* M Th« greatest part of Hebrew poetry, which is often held to be only 
Ipilitaa], i.s political." — Herder. 



THE MYSTERY OF PRAYER. 163 

the Christian made the requirements of human feeling 
the absolute powers and laws of the world. The 
miracles of Christianity, which belong just as essen- 
tially to its characterization, as the miracles of the 
Old Testament to that of Judaism, have not the wel- 
fare of a nation for their object, but the welfare of 
man : — that is, indeed, only of man considered as 
Christian ; for Christianity, in contradiction with the 
genuine universal human heart, recognised man only 
under the condition, the limitation, of belief in Christ. 
But this fatal limitation will be discussed further on. 
Christianity has spiritualised the egoism of Judaism 
into subjectivity (though even within Christianity this 
subjectivity is again expressed as pure egoism), has 
changed the desire for earthly happiness, the goal of 
the Israelitish religion, into the longing for heavenly 
bliss, which is the goal of Christianity. 

The highest idea, the God of a political community, 
of a people whose political system expresses itself in 
the form of religion, is Law, the consciousness of the 
law as an absolute divine power ; the highest idea, 
the God of unpolitical, unworldly feeling is Love ; the 
love which brings all the treasures and glories in 
heaven and upon earth as an offering to the beloved, 
the love whose law is the wish of the beloved one, and 
whose power is the unlimited power of the imagina- 
tion of intellectual miracle-working. 

God is the Love that satisfies our wishes, our emo- 
tional wants ; he is himself the realized wish of the 
heart, the wish exalted to the certainty of its fulfil- 
ment, of its reality, to that undoubting certainty be- 
fore which no contradiction of the understanding, no 
difficulty of experience or of the external world main- 
tains its ground. Certainty is the highest power for 
man ; that which is certain to him is the essential, 
the divine. " God is love :" this, the supreme dictum 
of Christianity, only expresses the certainty which 
human feeling has of itself, as the alone essential, i. e., 
absolute divine power, the certainty that the inmost 



164 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

wishes of the heart have objective validity and reality, 
that there are no limits, no positive obstacles to human 
feeling, that the whole world, with all its pomp and 
glory, is nothing weighed against human feeling. 
God is love : that is, feeling is the God of man, nay, 
God absolutely, the Absolute Being. God is the 
nature of human feeling, unlimited, pure feeling, made 
objective. God is the optative of the human heart 
transformed into the tempus finitum, the certain, bliss- 
ful " is." — the unrestricted omnipotence of feeling, 
prayer hearing itself, feeling perceiving itself, the 
echo of our cry of anguish. Pain must give itself 
utterance : involuntarily the artist seizes the lute, that 
he may breathe out his sufferings in its tones. He 
soothes his sorrow by making it audible to himself, 
by making it objective ; he lightens the burden which 
weighs upon his heart, by communicating it to the air, 
by making his sorrow a general existence. But nature 
listens not to the plaints of man, it is callous to his 
sorrows. Hence man turns away from Xature, from 
all visible objects. He turns within, that here, shel- 
tered and hidden from the inexorable powers, he may 
find audience for his griefs. Here he utters his op- 
pressive secrets : here he gives vent to his stifled sighs. 
This open-air of the heart, this outspoken secret, this 
uttered sorrow of the soul, is God. God is a tear of 
love, shed in the deepest concealment, over human 
misery. " God is an unutterable sigh, lying in the 
depths of the heart; 77 * this saying is the most remark- 
able, the profoundest, truest expression of Christian 
mv-ticism. 

The ultimate essence of religion is revealed by the 
simplest act of religion — prayer ; an act which implies 
nt leasl as much as the dogma of the Incarnation, al- 
though religious speculation stands amazed at this, as 
the greatest of mysteries. Not, certainly, the prayer 
before and after meals, the ritual of animal egoism, 

* Sebastian Frank von Word in Zinkgrefs Apophthegmata dcutschcr 
NatioD. 



THE MYSTERY OF PRAYER. 165 

but the prayer pregnant with sorrow, the prayer of 
disconsolate love, the prayer which expresses the 
power of the heart that crushes man to the ground, 
the prayer which begins in despair and ends in rapture. 
In prayer, man addresses God with the word of 
intimate affection — Thou : he thus declares articu- 
lately that God is his alter ego : he confesses to God 
as the being nearest to him, his most secret thoughts, 
his deepest wishes, which otherwise he shrinks from 
uttering. But he expresses these wishes in the confi- 
dence, in the certainty that they will be fulfilled. 
How could he apply to a being that had no ear for 
his complaints ? Thus what is prayer but the wish 
of the heart expressed with confidence in its fulfil- 
ment ? * what else is the being that fulfils these wish- 
es but human affection, the human soul, giving ear to 
itself, approving itself, unhesitatingly affirming itself? 
The man who does not exclude from his mind the idea 
of the world, the idea that every thing here must be 
sought intermediately, that every effect has its natural 
cause, that a wish is only to be attained when it is 
made an end and the corresponding means are put in- 
to operation — such a man does not pray : he only 
works : he transforms his attainable wishes into ob- 
jects of real activity ; other wishes which he recog- 
nises as purely subjective, he denies, or regards as 
simply subjective, pious aspiration?. In other words, 
he limits, he conditionates his being by the world, as 

* It would be an imbecile objection, to say that God fulfils only those 
wishes, those prayers, which are uttered in his name, or in the interest 
of the church of Christ, in short, only the wishes which are accordant, 
with his will ; for the will of God is the will of man, or rather God has 
the power, man the will : God makes men happy, but man wills that 
he may be happy. A particular wish may not be granted ; but that is 
of no consequence, if only the species, the essential tendency is accepted. 
The pious soul whose prayer has failed, consoles himself, therefore, by 
thinking that its fulfilment would not have been salutary for him. 
"Xullo igitur modo vota aut preces sunt irritas aut infrugiferas et recte 
dicitur, in petitione rerum corporalium aliquando Deum exaudire nos, 
non ad Yoluntatem nostram, sed ad solutem." — Oratio de Precatione, in 
Declamat. Melancthonis, T. iii. 



166 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

a member of which he conceives himself : he bounds 
his wishes by the idea of necessity. In prayer, on the 
contrary, man excludes from his mind the world, and 
with it all thoughts of intermediateness and depend- 
ence ; he makes his wishes — the concerns of his heart, 
objects of the independent, omnipotent, absolute being, 
i.e.. he affirms them without limitation. God is the 
affirmation * of human feeling ; prayer is the uncondi- 
tional confidence of human feeling in the absolute 
identity of the subjective and objective, the certainty 
that the power of the heart is greater than the power 
of nature, that the heart's need is absolute necessity, 
the Fate of the world. Prayer alters the course of 
Nature : it determines God to bring forth an effect in 
contradiction with the laws of Nature. Prayer is the 
absolute relation of the human heart to itself, to its 
own nature : in prayer, man forgets that there exists 
a limit to his wishes, and is happy in this forgetful- 
ness. 

Prayer is the self-division of man into two beings, 
— a dialogue of man with himself, with his heart. It 
is essential to the effectiveness of prayer that it be 
audibly, intelligibly, energetically expressed. Invol- 
untarily prayer wells forth in sound ; the struggling 
heart bursts the barrier of the closed lips. But audi- 
ble prayer is only prayer revealing its nature ; prayer 
is virtually, if not actually, speech, — the Latin word 
signifies both; in prayer, man speaks undis- 
guisedly of that which weighs upon him, which affects 
him closely ; he makes his heart objective ; — hence the 
moral power of prayer. Concentration, it is said, is 
the condition of prayer : but it is more than a condi- 
tion : prayer is itself concentration, — the dismissal of 
all distracting ideas, of all disturbing influences from 
without, retirement within oneself, in order to have 
relation only with one's own being. Only a trusting, 
open, hearty, fervent, prayer is said to help ; but this 
help lies in the prayer itself. As everywhere in reli- 
• Jft-wcrt 



THE MYSTERY OF PRAYER . 167 

gion the subjective, the secondary, the conditionating, 
is the prima causa, the objective fact ; so here, these 
subjective qualities are the objective nature of prayer 
itself. ■ H ' 

It is an extremely superficial view of prayer to re- 
gard it as an expression of the sense of dependence. 
It certainly expresses such a sense, but the dependence 
is that of man on his own heart, on his own feeling. 
He who feels himself only dependent, does not open 
his mouth in prayer ; the sense of dependence robs him 
of the desire, the courage for it ; for the sense of de- 
pendence is the sense of need. Prayer has its root 
rather in the unconditional trust of the heart, un- 
troubled by all thought of compulsive need, that its 
concerns are objects of the absolute Being, that the 
almighty, infinite nature of the Father of men, is a 
sympathetic, tender, loving nature, and that thus the 
dearest, most sacred emotions of man are divine reali- 
ties. But the child does not feel itself dependent on 
the father as a father ; rather, he has in the father the 
feeling of his own strength, the consciousness of his own 
worth, the guarantee of his existence, the certainty of 
the fulfilment of his wishes ; on the father rests the 
burden of care ; the child, on the contrary, lives care- 
less and happy in reliance on the father, his visible 
guardian spirit, who desires nothing but the child's 
welfare and happiness. The father makes the child 
an end, and himself the means of its existence. The 
child, in asking something of its father, does not ap- 

* Also, on subjective grounds, social prayer is more effectual than 
isolated prayer. Community enhances the force of emotion, heightens 
confidence. "What we are unable to do alone, we are able to do with 
others. The sense of solitude is the sense of limitation : the sense of 
community is the sense of freedom. Hence it is that men, when threat- 
ened by the destructive powers of nature, crowd together. " Multorum 
preces impossibile est, ut non impetrent, inquit Ambrosius .... Sanctse 
orationis fervoir quanto inter plures collectior tanto ardet diutius ac in- 

tensius cor divinum penetrat Negatur singularitati, quod concedi- 

tur charitati." — Sacra Hist, de Gentis Hebr. ortu, P. Paul. Mezger 
Aug. Vind. 1700, pp. 668, 669. 



168 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

ply to him as a being distinct from itself, a master, a 
person in general, but it applies to him in so far as he 
is dependent on, and determined by his paternal feel- 
ing, his love for his child.* The entreaty is only an 
expression of the force which the child exercises over 
the father ; if. indeed, the word force is appropriate 
here, since the force of the child is nothing more than 
the force of the father's own heart. Speech has the 
same form both for entreaty and command, namely, the 
imperative. And the imperative of love has infinitely 
more power than that of despotism. Love does not 
command ; love needs but gently to intimate its wishes, 
to be certain of their fulfilment ; the despot must 
throw compulsion even into the tones of his voice in 
order to make other beings, in themselves uncaring 
for him, the executors of his wishes. The imperative 
of love works with eleetro-magnetic power ; that of 
despotism with the mechanical power of a wooden 
telegraph. The most intimate epithet of God in pray- 
er is the word ''Father," the most intimate, because 
in it man is in relation to the absolute nature as to 
his own ; the word Father is the expression of the 
closest, the most intense identity, — the expression in 
which lies the pledge that my wishes will be fulfilled, 
the guarantee of my salvation. The omnipotence to 
which man turns in prayer is nothing but the Omnipo- 
tence of Goodness, which, for the sake of the salvation 
of man, makes the impossible possible ; — is, in truth, 
nothing else than the omnipotence of the heart, of 
feeling, which breaks through all the limits of the un- 
derstanding, which soars above all the boundaries of 
Nature, which wills that there be nothing else than 
feeling, nothing that contradicts the heart. Faith in 
omnipotence is faith in the unreality of the external 
world, of objectivity, — faith in the absolute reality of 
man's emotional nature: the essence of omnipotence 

* In the excellent work. T%eanthrop08 } eine Reihe r<>,/ Aphoriemen (Zurich, 
the sense of dependence, of omnipotence, of prayer, 
and of love, is admirably developed 



THE MYSTERY OF PRAYER. 169 

is simply the essence of feeling. Omnipotence is the 
power before which no law, no external condition, 
avails or subsists ; but this power is the emotional 
nature, which feels every determination, every law, to 
be a limit, a restraint, and for that reason dismisses 
it. Omnipotence does nothing more than accomplish 
the will of the feelings. In prayer man turns to the 
Omnipotence of Goodness ; — which simply means, that 
in prayer man adores his own heart, regards his own 
feelings as absolute. 



170 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH— THE MYSTERY OF 
MIRACLE. 



Faith in the power of prayer — and only where a power, 
an objective power, is ascribed to it, is prayer still a 
religious truth, — is identical with faith in miraculous 
power ; and faith in miracles is identical with the 
essence of faith in general. Faith alone prays ; the 
prayer of faith is alone effectual. But faith is nothing 
else than confidence in the reality of the subjective in 
opposition to the limitations or laws of nature and 
reason, — that is, of natural reason. The specific ob- 
ject of faith therefore is miracle ; faith is the belief in 
miracle ; faith and miracle are absolutely inseparable. 
That which is objectively miracle, or miraculous power, 
is subjectively faith ; miracle is the outward aspect of 
faith, faith the inward soul of miracle ; faith is the 
miracle of mind, the miracle of feeling, which merely 
becomes objective in external miracles. To faith no- 
thing is impossible, and miracle only gives actuality to 
this omnipotence of faith : miracles are but a visible 
example of what faith can effect. Unlimitedness, super- 
naturalness, exaltation of feeling, — transcendence is 
therefore the essence of faith. Faith has reference 
only to things which, in contradiction with the limits 
or laws of Nature and reason, give objective reality 
to human feelings and human desires. Faith unfetters 
the wishes of subjectivity from the bonds of natural 
reason ; it confers what nature and reason deny ; hence 
it makes man happy, for it satisfies his most personal 
wishes. And true faith is discomposed by no doubt, 



THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 171 

Doubt arises only where I go out of myself, overstep 
the bounds of my personality, concede reality and a 
right of suffrage to that which is distinct from myself ; 
— where I know myself to be a subjective, L e., a 
limited being, and seek to widen my limits by admit- 
ing things external to myself. But in faith the very 
principle of doubt is annulled ; for to faith the sub- 
jective is in and by itself the objective — nay, the ab- 
solute. Faith is nothing else than belief in the absolute 
reality of subjectivity. 

" Faith is that courage in the heart which trusts for 
all good to God. Such a faith, in which the heart 
places its reliance on God alone, is enjoined by God 
in the first commandment, where he says, I am the 

Lord thy God That is, I alone will be thy 

God, thou shalt seek no other God ; I will help thee 
out of all trouble. Thou shalt not think that I am an 
enemy to thee, and will not help thee. When thou 
thinkest so, thou makest me in thine heart into another 
God than I am. Wherefore hold it for certain that I 
am willing to be merciful to thee.* 7 — "As thou behavest 
thyself, so does God behave. If thou thinkest that he 
is angry with thee, He is angry ; if thou thinkest that 
He is unmerciful, and will cast thee into hell, He is 
so. As thou believest of God, so is He to thee. 7 ' — " If 
thou believest it, thou hast it ; but if thou believest 
not, thou hast none of it. 77 — i; Therefore, as we believe, 
so does it happen to us. If we regard him as our God, 
He will not be our devil. But if we regard him not 
as our God, then truly he is not our God, but must be 
a consuming fire. 77 — ;, By unbelief we make God a 
devil. 7 ** Thus, if I believe in a God, I have a God, i. e., 
faith in God is the God of man. If God is such, what- 
ever it may be, as I believe Him, what else is the na- 
ture of God than the nature of faith ? Is it possible 
for thee to believe in a God who regards thee favour- 
ably, if thou dost not regard thyself favourably, if thou 
despairest of man, if he is nothing to thee ? What 

* Luther (T. xv. p. 282. T, xvi. pp. 491—493). 

k2 



172 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

else then is the being of God but the being of man, 
the absolute self-love of man ? If thou believest that 
God is for thee, thou believest that nothing is or can 
be against thee, that nothing contradicts thee. But 
if thou believest that nothing is or can be against thee, 
thou believest — "what? — nothing less than that thou 
art God.* That God is another being is only illusion, 
only imagination. In declaring that God is for thee, 
thou declarest that he is thy own being. What then 
is faith but the infinite self-certainty of man, the un- 
doubting certainty that his own subjective being is the 
objective, absolute being, the being of beings? 

Faith does not limit itself by the idea of a world, 
a universe, a necessity. For faith there is nothing 
but God, i. e., limitless subjectivity. Where faith 
rises the world sinks, nay, has already sunk into no- 
thing. Faith in the real annihilation of the world — 
in an immediately approaching, a mentally present 
annihilation of this world, a world antagonistic to the 
wishes of the Christian, is therefore a phenomenon be- 
longing to the inmost essence of Christianity ; a faith 
which is not properly separable from the other elements 
of Christian belief, and with the renunciation of which, 
true, positive Christianity is renounced and denied.f 

* "God is Almighty ; but he who believes, is a God." Luther (in 
Chr. Kappa Christus u. die Weltgeschichte, s. 11). In another place Luther 
calls faith the " Creator of the Godhead;" it is true that he immediately 
adds, as he must necessarily do on his stand-point, the following limita- 
tion : — " Not that it creates anything in the divine, eternal Being, but 
that it creates that Being in us." (T. xi. p. 161.) 

f This belief is so essential to the Bible, that without it the biblical 
writers can scarcely be understood. The passage, 2 Pet. iii. 8, as is 
evident from the tenor of the whole chapter, says nothing in opposition to 
an immediate destruction of the world; for though with the Lord a thou- 
sand year- are a- one day, yet at the same time one day is as a thousand 
and therefore tha world may, even by to-morrow, no longer exist. 
That in the Bible a very near end of the worl-1 U expected and prophesied, 
although the day and lionr are not determined, only falsehood <>r hlind- 
ii deny. — See on this subject Luetzdberger. Bence religious Christ- 
ians, in almost all times, have believed that the destruction of the world 
i near at hand — Lntber for example, often says that "the last day is not 



THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 173 

The essence of faith, as may be confirmed by an ex- 
amination of its objects down to the minutest speciality, 
is the idea that that which man wishes actually is : he 
wishes to be immortal, therefore he is immortal ; he 
wishes for the existence of a being who can do every- 
thing which is impossible to Nature and reason, there- 
fore such a being exists ; he wishes for a world which 
corresponds to the desires of the heart, a world of un- 
limited subjectivity, i. e., of unperturbed feeling, of 
uninterrupted bliss, while nevertheless there exists a 
world the opposite of that subjective one, and hence 
this world must pass away, — as necessarily pass away 
as God, or absolute subjectivity, must remain. Faith, 
love, hope, are the Christian Trinity. Hope has re- 
lation to the fulfilment of the promises, the wishes 
which are not yet fulfilled, but which are to be ful- 
filled ; love has relation to the Being who gives and 
fulfils these promises ; faith to the promises, the 
wishes, which are already fulfilled, which are historical 
facts. 

Miracle is an essential object of Christianity, an 
essential article of faith. But what is miracle ? A 
supranaturalistic wish realized — nothing more. The 
apostle Paul illustrates the nature of Christian faith 
by the example of Abraham. Abraham could not, in 
a natural way, ever hope for posterity ; Jehovah never- 
theless promised it to him out of special favour ; and 
Abraham believed in spite of Nature. Hence this 
faith was reckoned to him as righteousness, as merit ; 
for it implies great force of subjectivity to accept as 
certain something in contradiction with experience, at 
least with rational, normal experience. But what was 
the object of this divine promise? Posterity : the ob- 
ject of a human wish. And in what did Abraham be- 
lieve when he believed in Jehovah ? In a Being who 

far off," (e. g. T. xvi. p. 26) ; — or at least their souls have longed for the 
end of the world, though they have prudently left it undecided whether 
it be near or distant. See Augustin (de Fine Sseculi ad Hesychium, 
c. 13). 



174 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

can do everything, and can fulfil all wishes. " Is any- 
thing too hard for the Lord?"* 

But why do we go so far back as to Abraham ? We 
have the most striking examples much nearer to us. 
Miracle feeds the hungry, cures men born blind, deaf, 
and lame, rescues from fatal diseases, and even raises 
the dead at the prayer of relatives. Thus it satisfies 
human wishes, — and wishes which, though not always 
intrinsically like the wish for the restoration of the 
dead, yet in so far as they appeal to miraculous power, 
to miraculous aid. are transcendental, supranaturalistic. 
But miracle is distinguished from that mode of satis- 
fying human wishes and needs which is in accordance 
with Xature and reason, in this respect, that it satis- 
fies the wishes of men in a way corresponding to the 
nature of wishes — in the most desirable way. Wishes 
own no restraint, no law, no time ; they would be ful- 
filled without delay on the instant. And behold! 
miracle is as rapid as a wish is impatient. Miraculous 
*power realizes human wishes in a moment, at one stroke, 
without any hindrance. That the sick should become 
well is no miracle ; but that they should become so 
immediately, at a mere word of command, — that is the 
mystery of miracle. Thus it is not in its product or 
object that miraculous agency is distinguished from 
the agency of nature and reason, but only in its mode 
and process ; for if miraculous power were to effect 
something absolutely new, never before beheld, never 
conceived, or not even conceivable, it would be practi- 
cally proved to be an essentially different, and at the 
same time objective agency. But the agency which 
in essence, in substance, is natural and accordant with 
the forms of the sense-, and which is supernatural, 
Bupersensual, only in the mode or process, is the agency 
of the Imagination. The power of miracle is therefore 
nothing else than the power of the imagination. 

Miraculous agency, is agency directed to an end. 
The yearning alter the departed Lazarus, the de- 

* Gen. xviii. 14. 



THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 175 

sire of his relatives to possess him again, was 
the motive of the miraculous resuscitation ; the satis- 
faction of this wish, the end. It is true that the mira- 
cle happened " for the glory of God, that the Son of 
God might be glorified thereby ; " but the message 
sent to the Master by the sisters of Lazarus, " Behold, 
he whom thou lovest, is sick," and the tears which 
Jesus shed, vindicate for the miracle a human origin 
and end. The meaning is : to that power which can 
awaken the dead, no human wish is impossible to ac- 
complish. * And the glory of the Son consists in this : 
that he is acknowledged and reverenced as the being 
who is able to do what man is unable, but wishes to 
do. Activity towards an end, is well known to de- 
scribe a circle : in the end it returns upon its begin- 
ning. But miraculous agency is distinguished from 
the ordinary realization of an object, in that it realizes 
the end without means, that it effects an immediate 
identity of the wish and its fulfilment; that conse- 
quently it describes a circle, not in a curved, but in a 
straight line, that is, the shortest line. A circle in a 
straight line is the mathematical symbol of miracle. 
The attempt to construct a circle with a straight line, 
would not be more ridiculous than the attempt to 
deduce miracle philosophically. To reason, miracle 
is absurd, inconceivable ; as inconceivable as wooden 
iron, or a circle without a periphery. Before it is 
discussed whether a miracle can happen, let it be 
shown that miracle i. e., the inconceivable, is con- 
ceivable. 



* " To the whole world it is impossible to raise the dead, but to the 
Lord Christ, not only is it not impossible, but it is no trouble or labour 

to him This Christ did as a witness and a sign, that he can and 

will raise from death. He does it not at all times and to every one 

It is enough that he has done it a few times ; the rest he leaves 

to the last day." — Luther (T. xvi. p. 518). The positive, essential sig- 
nificence of miracle is therefore that the divine nature is the human 
nature. Miracles confirm, authenticate doctrine. What doctrine? 
Simply this, that God is a Saviour of men, their Redeemer out of all 
trouble, i.e., a being'correspending to the wants and wishes of man, and 



176 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

What suggests to man the notion that miracle is 
conceivable is, that miracle is represented as an event 
perceptible by the senses, and hence man cheats his 
reason by material images which screen the contra- 
diction. The miracle of the turning of water into 
wine, for example, implies in fact nothing else than 
that water is wine, — nothing else than that two abso- 
lutely contradictory predicates or subjects are identi- 
cal ; for in the hand of the miracle-worker there is no 
distinction between the two substances ; the transfor- 
mation is only the visible appearance of this identity 
of two contradictories. But the transformation con- 
ceals the contradiction, because the natural conception 
of change is interposed. Here, however, is no gradual, 
no natural, or, so to speak, organic change ; but an 
absolute, immaterial one ; a pure creatio ex nihilo. In 
the mysterious and momentous act of miraculous pow- 
er, in the act which constitutes the miracle, water is 
suddenly and imperceptibly wine : which is equivalent 
to saying that iron is wood, or wooden iron. 

The miraculous act — and miracle is only a transient 
act — is therefore not an object of thought, for it nulli- 
fies the very principle of thought ; but it is just as 
little an object of sense, an object of real or even pos- 
sible experience. Water is indeed an object of sense, 
and wine also ; I first see water, and then wine ; but 
the miracle itself, that which makes this water sudden- 
ly wine, — this, not being a natural process, but a pure 
perfect without any antecedent imperfect, without any 
modus, without way or means, is no object of real, or 
even of possible experience. Miracle is a thing of the 
imagination ; and on that very account is it so agree- 
able : for the imagination is the faculty which alone 
corresponds to personal feeling, because it sets 
aside all limits, all laws which are painful to the feel- 
ings, and thus makes objective to man the immediate, 
absolutely unlimited satisfaction of his subjective 

therefore a human being. What the God-man declares in words, mira- 
cle demonstrates ad oculos by deeds. 



THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 177 

wishes.* Accordance with subjective inclination, is 
the essential characteristic of miracle. It is true that 
miracle produces also an awful, agitating impression, 
so far as it expresses a power which nothing can 
resist, — the power of the imagination. Btit this im- 
pression lies only in the transient miraculous act : 
the abiding, essential impression is the agreeable one. 
At the moment in which the beloved Lazarus is raised 
up, the surrounding relatives and friends are awe- 
struck at the extraordinary, almighty power which 
transforms the dead into the living ; but soon the re- 
latives fall into the arms of the risen one, and lead 
him with tears of joy to his home, there to celebrate 
a festival of rejoicing. Miracle springs out of feeling, 
and has its end in feeling. Even in the traditional 
representation it does not deny its origin ; the repre- 
sentation which gratifies the feelings is alone the ade- 
quate one. Who can fail to recognise in the narrative 
of the resurrection of Lazarus, the tender, pleasing, 
legendary tone ? t Miracle is agreeable, because, as has 
been said, it satisfies the wishes of man without labour, 
without effort. Labour is unimpassioned, unbelieving, 
rationalistic ; for man here makes his existence depend- 
ent on activity directed to an end, which activity again 
is itself determined solely by the idea of the objective 
world. But feeling does not at all trouble itself about 
the objective world ; it does no go out of or beyond 
itself; it is happy in itself. The element of culture, 
the northern principle of self-renunciation, is wanting 
to the emotional nature. The Apostles and Evange- 
lists were no scientifically cultivated men. Culture, 

* This satisfaction is certainly so far limited, that it is united to re- 
ligion, to faith in God : a remark which however is so obvious as to be 
superfluous. But this limitation is in fact no limitation, for God him- 
self is unlimited, absolutely satisfied, self-contented human feeling. 

| The legends of Catholicism — of course only the best, the really 
pleasing ones — are, as it were, only the echo of the key-note which pre- 
dominates in this New Testament narrative. Miracle might be fitly de- 
fined as religious humour. Catholicism especially has developed miracle 
on this its humourous side. 

h3 



178 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

in general, is nothing else than the exaltation of the 
individual above his subjectivity to objective univer- 
sal ideas, to the contemplation of the world. The 
Apostles were men of the people ; the people live only 
in themselves, in their feelings : therefore Christianity 
took possession of the people. Vox popiili vox Dei. 
Did Christianity conquer a single philosopher, histo- 
rian, or poet, of the classical period ? The philoso- 
phers who went 'over to Christianity were feeble, 
contemptible philosophers. All who had yet the 
classic spirit in them were hostile, or at least indiffer- 
ent to Christianity. The decline of culture was iden- 
tical with the victory of Christianity. The classic 
spirit, the spirit of culture, limits itself by laws, — not 
indeed by arbitrary, finite laws, but by inherently true 
and valid ones ; it is determined by the necessity the 
truth of the nature of things ; in a word, it is the 
objective spirit. In place of this, there entered with 
Christianity the principle of unlimited, extravagant, 
fanatical, supranaturalistic subjectivity ; a principle 
intrinsically opposed to that of science, of culture. * 
With Christianity man lost the capability of conceiv- 
ing himself as a part of Nature, of the universe. As 
long as true, unfeigned, unfalsified, uncompromising 
Christianity existed, as long as Christianity was a 
living, practical truth, so long did real miracles hap- 
pen ; and they necessarily happened, for faith in dead, 
historical, past miracles is itself a dead faith, the first 
step towards unbelief, or rather the first and therefore 
the timid, uncandid, servile mode in which unbelief in 
miracle finds vent. But where miracles happen, all 
definite forms melt in the golden haze of imagination 
and feeling ; there the world, reality, is no truth ; 

* Culture in the sense in -which it is here taken. It is highly charac- 
teristic of Christianity, and a popular proof of our positions, that the 
onlv LangnagC in which the Divine Spirit was and is held to reveal him- 

seli in Christianity, Lb art the Language "fa Sophocles or a Plato, of art 

and philosophy, but the Tagne, unformed, crudely emotional language of 
the Bible. 



THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 179 

there the miracle-working, emotional, L e., subjective 
being, is held to be alone the objective, real being. 

To the merely emotional man the imagination is 
immediately, without his willing or knowing it, the 
highest, the dominant activity ; and being the highest, 
it is the activity of God, the creative activity. To him 
feeling is an immediate truth and reality ; he cannot 
abstract himself from his feelings, he cannot get beyond 
them : and equally real is his imagination. The ima- 
gination is not to him what it is to us men of active 
understanding, who distinguish it as subjective from 
objective cognition ; it is immediately identical with 
himself, with his feelings, and since it is identical with 
his being, it is his essential, objective, necessary view 
of things. For us, indeed, imagination is an arbitrary 
activity ; but where man has not imbibed the principle 
of culture, of theory, where he lives and moves only in 
his feelings, the imagination is an immediate, involun- 
tary activity. 

The explanation of miracles by feeling and imagin- 
ation is regarded by many in the present day as super- 
ficial. But let any one transport himself to the time 
when living, present miracles were believed in ; when 
the reality of things without us was as yet no sacred 
article of faith ; when men were so void of any theo- 
retic interest in the world, that they from clay to day 
looked forward to its destruction ; when they lived 
only in the rapturous prospect and hope of heaven, 
that is, in the imagination of it (for whatever heaven 
may be, for them, so long as they were on earth, it 
existed only in the imagination) ; when this imagina- 
tion was not a fiction but a truth, nay, the eternal, 
alone abiding truth, not an inert, idle source of conso- 
lation, but a practical moral principle determining ac- 
tions, a principle to which men joyfully sacrificed real 
life, the real world with all its glories ; — let him trans- 
port himself to those times and he must himself be 
very superficial to pronounce the psychological genesis 
of miracles superficial. It is no valid objection that 



180 THE ESSENCE OP CHRISTIANITY. 

miracles have happened, or are supposed to have 
happened, in the presence of whole assemblies : no man 
was independent, all were filled with exalted suprana- 
turalistic ideas and feelings ; all were animated by the 
same faith, the same hope, the same hallucinations. 
And who does not know that there are common or 
similar dreams, common or similar visions, especially 
among impassioned individuals who are closely united 
and restricted to their own circle ? But be that as it 
may. If the explanation of miracles by feeling and 
imagination is superficial, the charge of superficiality 
falls not on the explainer but on that which he ex- 
plains, namely, on miracle ; for, seen in clear daylight, 
miracle presents absolutely nothing else than the sor- 
cery of the imagination, which satisfies without contra- 
diction all the wishes of the heart.* 

* Many miracles may really have had originally a physical or physio- 
logical phenomenon as their foundation. But we are here considering 
only the religious significance and genesis of miracle. 



THE MYSTERY OF THE RESURRECTION. 181 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE MYSTERY OF THE RESURRECTION AND 
OF THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION. 



The quality of being agreeable to subjective inclina- 
tion belongs not only to practical miracles, in which 
it is conspicuous, as they have immediate reference to 
the interest or wish of the human individual ; it be- 
longs also to theoretical, or more properly dogmatic 
miracles, and hence to the Resurrection and the Mira- 
culous Conception. 

Man, at least in a state of ordinary well-being, has 
the wish not to die. This wish is originally identical 
with the instinct of self-preservation. Whatever lives 
seeks to maintain itself, to continue alive, and conse- 
quently not to die. Subsequently, when reflection and 
feeling are developed under the urgency of life, espe- 
cially of social and political life, this primary negative 
wish becomes the positive wish for a life, and that a 
better life, after death. But this wish involves the 
further wish for the certainty of its fulfilment. Reason 
can afford no such certainty. It has therefore been 
said that all proofs of immortality are insufficient, and 
even that unassisted reason is not capable of appre- 
hending it, still less of proving it. And with justice ; 
for reason furnishes only general proofs ; it cannot 
give the certainty of any personal immortality, and it 
is precisely this certainty which is desired. Such a 
certainty requires an immediate personal assurance, a 
practical demonstration. This can only be given to 
me by the fact of a dead person, whose death has been 
previously certified, rising again from the grave ; and 



182 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

he must be no indifferent person, but on the contrary 
the type and representative of all others, so that his 
resurrection also may be the type, the guarantee of 
theirs. The resurrection of Christ is therefore the 
satisfied desire of man for an immediate certainty of 
his personal existence after death, — personal immor- 
tality as a sensible, indubitable fact. 

Immortality was with the heathen philosophers a 
question in which the personal interest was only a 
collateral point. They concerned themselves chiefly 
with the nature of the soul, of mind, of the vital prin- 
ciple. The immortality of the vital principle by no 
means involves the idea, not to mention the certainty, 
of personal immortality. Hence the vagueness, dis- 
crepancy, and dubiousness with which the ancients 
express themselves on this subject. The Christians, 
on the contrary, in the undoubting certainty that their 
personal, self-flattering wishes will be fulfilled, i. e., in 
the certainty of the divine nature of their emotions, 
the truth and unassailableness of their subjective feel- 
ings, converted that which to the ancients was a theo- 
retic problem, into an immediate fact, — converted a 
theoretic, and in itself open question, into a matter of 
conscience, the denial of which was equivalent to the 
high treason of atheism. He who denies the resur- 
rection denies the resurrection of Christ, but he who 
denies the resurrection of Christ denies Christ himself, 
and he who denies Christ denies God. Thus did 
u spiritual" Christianity unspiritualize what was spir- 
itual! To the Christians the immortality of the rea- 
son, of the soul, was far too abstract and negative ; 
they had at heart only a personal immortality, such as 
would gratify their feelings; and the guarantee of this 
lies in a bodily resurrection alone. The resurrection 
of the body is the highest triumph of Christianity over 
the Bublime, bul certainly abstract spirituality and ob- 
jectivity of the ancients. For this reason the idea of 
the ressurrection could never be assimilated by the 
pagan mind. 



THE MYSTERY OP THE RESURRECTION. 183 

As the Resurrection, which terminates the sacred 
history, (to the Christian not a mere history, but the 
truth itself.) is a realized wish, so also is that which 
commences it, namely, the Miraculous Conception, 
though this has relation not so much to an immediately 
personal interest as to a particular subjective feeling. 

The more man alienates himself from Nature, the 
more subjective, L e., supranatural, or antinatural, is 
his view of things, the greater the horror he has of 
Nature, or at least of those natural objects and pro- 
cesses which displease his imagination, which affect him 
disagreeably.* The free, objective man doubtless finds 
things repugnant and distasteful in Nature, but he re- 
gards them as natural, inevitable results, and under 
this conviction he subdues his feeling as a merely sub- 
jective and untrue one. On the contrary, the subjective 
man, who lives only in the feelings and imagination, 
regards these things with a quite peculiar aversion. 
He has the eye of that unhappy foundling, who even in 
looking at the loveliest flower could pay attention only 
to the little "black beetle,' 7 which crawled over it, and 
who by this perversity of perception had his enjoyment 
in the sight of flowers always embittered. Moreover, 
the subjective man makes his feelings the measure, the 
standard of what ought to be. That which does not 
please him, which offends his transcendental, suprana- 
tural, or antinatural feelings, ought not to be. Even 
if that which pleases him cannot exist without being 
associated with that which displeases him, the subjec- 

* " If Adam had not fallen into sin, nothing would have been known 
of the cruelty of wolves, lions, bears, &c., and there would not have been 
in all creation anything vexatious and dangerous to man . . . . ; no thorns, 
or thistles, or diseases . . . . ; his brow would not have been wrinkled ; no 
foot, or hand, or other member of the body would have been feeble or in- 
firm." — " But now, since the Fall, we all know and feel what a fury lurks 
in our flesh, which not only burns and rages with lust and desire, but also 
loathes, when once obtained, the very thing it has desired. But this is 
the fault of original sin, which has polluted all creatures ; wherefore I 
believe that before the Fall the sun was much brighter, water much 
clearer, and the land much richer, and fuller of all sorts of plants." — 
Luther (T. i. s. 322, 323, 329, 337.) 



184 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

tive man is not guided by the wearisome laws of logic 
and physics but by the self-will of the imagination ; 
hence he drops what is disagreeable in a fact, and 
holds fast alone what is agreeable. Thus the Idea of 
the pure, holy Virgin pleases him ; still he is also 
pleased with the idea of the Mother, but only of the 
Mother who already carries the infant on her arms. 

Virginity in itself is to him the highest moral idea, 
the corrtu ccpiae of his supranaturalistic feelings and 
ideas, his personified sense of honour and of shame 
before common nature.* Nevertheless, there stirs in 
his bosom a natural feeling also, the compassionate 
feeling which makes the Mother beloved. What then 
is to be done in this difficulty of the heart, in this con- 
flict between a natural and a supranatural feeling? 
The supranaturalist must unite the two, must comprise 
in one and the same subject two predicates which ex- 
clude each other.t what a plenitude of agreeable, 
sweet, super sensual, sensual eiLotions lies in this com- 
bination ? 

Here we have the key to the contradiction in Catho- 
licism, that at the same time marriage is holy, and 
celibacy is holy. This simply realizes, as a practical 
contradiction, the dogmatic contradiction of the Virgin 
Mather. But this wondrous union of virginity and 
maternity, contradicting nature and reason, but in the 
highest degree accordant with the feelings andimagin- 

* " Tantiim denique abest incesti cnpido, ut nonmillis rubori sit ctiam 
pudica eonjunctio." — M. Felicis, Oct. c. 31. One Father was so extra- 
ordinarily chaste that he had never seen a woman's face, nay, lie dreaded 
even touching himself, kk Be qnoqne ipsnm attingere qnodammodo horrc- 
hat." Another Father had BO tine an olfactory sense in this matter, that 
(hi the approach of an unchaste person he perceived an insupportable 
odour. — Bavle (Diet. Art. Mariana lain. ('.). But the supreme, the di- 
vine principle of this hvperphvsica] delicacy, is the Virgin Mary; hence 
the Catholics name her Virginnm Gloria, Yirginitatis corona, Yirgini- 
tatis tjrpna et forma puritatis, Virginum vexillifera, Yirginitatis magistra, 
Virginnm prima, Virginitatu primiceria. 

f " Salve sancta parens, enixa pnerpera kegern, 
Gaudia inatris habens cum virginitatis honore." 

Theol. Schol. Mezger. t. iv. p. 132. 



THE MYSTERY OF THE RESURRECTION. 185 

ation, is no product of Catholicism ; it lies already in 
the twofold part which marriage plays in the Bible, 
especially in the view of the Apostle Paul. The super- 
natural conception of Christ is a fundamental doctrine 
of Christianity, a doctrine which expresses its inmost 
dogmatic essence, and which rests on the same founda- 
tion as all other miracles and articles of faith. As 
death, which the philosopher, the man of science, the 
free objective thinker in general, accepts as. a natural 
necessity, and as indeed all the limits of nature, which 
are impediments to feeling, but to reason are rational 
laws, were repugnant to the Christians, and were set 
aside by them through the supposed agency of miracu- 
lous power ; so, necessarily, they had an equal repug- 
nance to the natural process of generation, and super- 
seded it by miracle. The Miraculous Conception is 
not less welcome than the Resurrection, to all believ- 
ers ; for it was the first step towards the purification 
of mankind, polluted by sin and nature. Only because 
the God-man was not infected with original sin, could 
he, the pure one, purify mankind in the eyes of God, to 
whom the natural process of generation was an object 
of aversion, because he himself is nothing else but su- 
pernatural feeling. 

Even the arid Protestant orthodoxy, so arbitrary 
in its criticism, regarded the conception of the God- 
producing Virgin, as a great, adorable, amazing, holy 
mystery of faith, transcending reason.* But with the 
Protestants, who confined the speciality of the Christ- 
ian to the domain of faith, and with whom, in life, it 
was allowable to be a man, even this mystery had only 
a dogmatic, and no longer a practical significance ; 
they did not allow it to interfere with their desire of 
marriage. With the Catholics, and with all the old, 
uncompromising, uncritical Christians, that which was 
a mystery of faith, was a mystery of life, of morality.f 

* See e. g. J. D. Winckler, Philolog. Lactant. s. Brunsvigse, 1754, pp. 
247—254. 

f See on tbis subject Philos. und Christenthum, by L. Feuerbach. 



186 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Catholic morality is Christian, mystical ; Prostestant 
morality was, in its very beginning, rationalistic. 
Protestant morality is, and was, a carnal mingling of 
the Christian with the man, the natural, political, civil, 
social man, or whatever else he may be called in dis- 
tinction from the Christian ; Catholic morality cher- 
ished in its heart the mystery of the unspotted virginity. 
Catholic morality was the Mater dolorosa : Protestant 
morality a comely, fruitful matron. Protestantism is 
from beginning to end the contradiction between faith 
and love : for which very reason it has been the source, 
or at least the condition, of freedom. Just because the 
mystery of the Virgo Dei'para had with the Protestants 
a place only in theory, or rather in dogma, and no 
longer in practice, they declared that it was impossible 
to express oneself with sufficient care and reserve con- 
cerning it. and that it ought not to be made an object 
of speculation. That which is denied in practice has 
no true basis and durability in man. is a mere spectre 
of the mind ; and hence it is withdrawn from the 
investigation of the understanding. Ghosts do not 
brook daylight. 

Even the later doctrine, (which, however, had been 
already enunciated in a letter to St. Bernard, who re- 
jects it.) that Mary herself was conceived without taint 
of original sin, is by no means a "strange school-bred 
doctrine." as it is called by a modern historian. That 
which gives birth to a miracle, which brings forth God, 
must itself be of miraculous, divine origin, or nature. 
How could Mary have had the honour of being over- 
shadowed by the Holy Ghost, if she had not been from 
the first pure? Could the Holy Ghost take up his 
abode in a body polluted by original sin? If the 
principle of Christianity, the miraculous birth of the 
Saviour, does not appear strange to you, why think 
strange the naive, well meaning inferences of Catho- 
licism ? 



THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST. 187 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST, OR 
THE PERSONAL GOD. 



The fundamental dogmas of Christianity are realized 
wishes of the heart ;■ — the essence of Christianity is the 
essence of human feeling. It is pleasanter to be pas- 
sive than to act, to be redeemed and made free by an- 
other than to free oneself; pleasanter to make one's 
salvation dependent on a person than on the force of 
one's own spontaneity ; pleasanter to set before oneself 
an object of love than an object of effort ; pleasanter to 
know oneself beloved by God than merely to have that 
simple, natural self-love which is innate in all beings : 
pleasanter to see oneself imaged in the love-beaming 
eyes of another personal being, than to look into the 
concave mirror of self, or into the cold depths of the 
ocean of Nature ; pleasanter, in short, to allow oneself 
to be acted on by one's own feeling as by another, but 
yet fundamentally idential being, than to regulate one- 
self by reason. Feeling is the oblique case of the ego, 
the ego in the accusative. The ego of Fichte is desti- 
tute of feeling, because the accusative is the same as 
the nominative, because it is indeclinable. . But feeling 
or sentiment is the ego acted on by itself, and by itself 
as another being, — the passive ego. Feeling changes 
the active in man into the passive, and the passive into 
the active. To feeling, that which thinks is the thing 
thought, and the thing thought is that which thinks. 
Feeling is the dream of Nature ; and there is nothing- 
more blissful, nothing more profound than dreaming. 
But what is dreaming ? The reversing of the waking 



188 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

consciousness. In dreaming, the active is the passive, 
the passive the active ; in dreaming, I take the spon- 
taneous action of my own mind for an action upon me 
from without, my emotions for events, my conceptions 
and sensations for true existences apart from myself. 
I suffer what I also perform. Dreaming is a double 
refraction of the rays of light ; hence its indescribable 
charm. It is the same ego, the same being in dreaming 
as in waking ; the only distinction is, that in waking, 
the ego acts on itself ; whereas in dreaming, it is acted 
on by itself as by another being. I think myself — is a 
passionless, rationalistic position ; lam thought by God, 
and think myself only as thought by God — is a position 
pregnant with feeling, religious. Peeling is a dream 
with the eyes open ; religion the dream of waking 
consciousness : dreaming is the key to the mysteries of 
religion. 

The highest law of feeling is the immediate unity of 
will and deed, of wishing and reality. This law is ful- 
filled by the Redeemer. As external miracles, in 
opposition to natural activity, realize immediately the 
physical wants and wishes of man ; so the Redeemer, 
the Mediator, the God-man, in opposition to the moral 
spontaneity of the natural or rationalistic man, satisfies 
immediately the inward moral wants and wishes, since 
he dispenses man on his own side from any intermediate 
activity. What thou wishest is already effected. Thou 
desirest to win, to deserve happiness. Morality is the 
condition, the means of happiness. But thou canst not 
fulfil this condition ; that is, in truth, thou needcst not. 
That which jhou seckest to do has already been done. 
Thou hast only to be i tassive, thou needest only believe, 
only enjoy. Thou desirest to make God favourable to 
thee, to appease his anger, to be at peace with thy 
conscience. But this peace exists already; this peace 
is the Mediator, the God-man. He is thy appeased con- 
science : he is the fulfilment of the law, and therewith 
the fulfilment of thy own wish and effort. 

Therefore it is no longer the law, but the fulliller of 



THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST. 189 

the law, who is the model, the guiding thread, the rule 
of thy life. He who fulfils the law, annuls the law. 
The law has authority, has validity, only in relation to 
him who violates it. But he who perfectly fulfils the 
law, says to it : What thou wiliest I spontaneously 
will, and what thou commandest I enforce by deeds ; 
my life is the true, the living law. The fulfill er of the 
law, therefore, necessarily steps into the place of the 
law ; moreover he becomes a new law, one whose yoke 
is light and easy. For in place of the merely imperative 
law, he presents himself as an example, as an object of 
love, of admiration and emulation, and thus becomes 
the Saviour from sin. The law does not give me the 
power to fulfil the law ; no ! it is hard and merciless ; 
it only commands, without troubling itself whether I 
can fulfil it, or how I am to fulfil it ; it leaves me to 
myself, without counsel or aid. But he who presents 
himself to me as an example, lights up my path, takes 
me by the hand, and imparts to me his own strength. 
The law lends no power of resisting sin, but example 
works miracles. The law is dead ; but example ani- 
mates, inspires, carries men involuntarily along with it. 
The law speaks only to the understanding, and sets it- 
self directly in opposition to the instincts ; example, 
on the contrary, appeals to a powerful instinct imme- 
diately connected with the activity of the senses, that 
of involuntary imitation. Example operates on the 
feelings and imagination. In short, example has magi- 
cal, i. e., sense-affecting powers ; for the magical or 
involuntary force of attraction, is an essential property 
as of matter in general, so in particular of that which 
affects the senses. 

The ancients said, that if virtue could become visible, 
its beauty would win and inspire all hearts. The 
Christians were so happy as to see even this wish ful- 
filled. The heathens had an unwritten, the Jews a 
written law ; the Christians had a model — a visible, 
personal, living law, a law made flesh. Hence the joy- 
fulness especially of the primitive Christians, hence the 



190 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

glory of Christianity that it alone contains and bestows 
the power to resist sin. And this glory is not to be 
denied it. Only it is to be observed that the power 
of the exemplar of virtue is not so much the power of 
example in general, just as the power of religious music 
is not the power of religion, but the power of music ;* 
and that therefore, though the image of virtue has 
virtuous actions as its consequences, these actions are 
destitute of the dispositions and motives of virtue. 
But this simple and true sense of the redeeming and 
reconciling power of example in distinction from the 
power of law, to which we have reduced the antithesis 
of the law and Christ, by no means expresses the full 
religious significance of the Christian redemption and 
reconciliation. In this, everything reduces itself to 
the personal power of that miraculous intermediate 
being who is neither God alone nor man alone, but a 
man who is also God, and a God who is also man, and 
who can therefore only be comprehended in connection 
with the significance of miracle. In this, the miracu- 
lous Redeemer is nothing else than the realized wish 
of feeling to be free from the laws of morality, i. e., 
from the conditions to which virtue is united in the 
natural course of things ; the realized wish to be freed 
from moral evils instantaneously, immediately, by a 
stroke of magic, that is, in an absolutely subjective, 
agreeable way. "The word of God/' says Luther, for 
example, "accomplishes all tilings swiftly, brings for- 
giveness of sins, and gives the eternal life, and costs 
nothing more than that thou shouldst hear the word, 
and when thou hast heard it shouldst believe. If thou 
believest, thou hast it without pains, cost, delay, or 
difficulty."! But that hearing of the word of God, 

* In relation to this, the confession of Augustine is interesting. " Ita 
flnctao intor periculum volnptatU et experimentum salubritatis : magisqua 
adducor . . . cantandi consuetudinem approbare in ecclesia, up peroblao- 
tamenta Barium infirmior animus in affectum pietatis assurgat. Tamen 
cum mihi accidit, ut no* amplius cautus, quam res quae canitur moveat, 
pcenaliter me peocare ponfiteor." — Confess. 1. x. c. 33. 

f Th. xvi. p. 4M 



THE MYSTEEY OP THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST. 191 

which is followed by faith, is itself a "gift of God.' 7 
Thus faith is nothing else than a psychological miracle, 
a supernatural operation of God in man, as Luther 
likewise says. But man becomes free from sin and 
from the consciousness of guilt only through faith. — 
morality is dependent on faith, the virtues of the 
heathens are only splendid sins ; thus he becomes mor- 
ally free and good only through miracle. 

That the idea of miraculous power is one with the 
idea of the intermediate being, at once divine and 
human, has historical proof in the fact that the mira- 
cles of the Old Testament, the delivery of the law, 
Providence — all the elements which constitute the 
essence of religion, were in the later Judaism attributed 
to the Logos. In Philo, however, this Logos still 
hovers in the air between heaven and earth, now as 
abstract, now as concrete : that is, Philo vacillates 
between himself as a philosopher and himself as a 
religious Israelite, between the positive element of 
religion and the metaphysical idea of deity ; but in 
such a way that even the abstract element is with him 
more or less invested with imaginative forms. In 
Christianity this Logos first attained perfect consist- 
ence, i. e., religion now concentrated itself exclusively 
on that element, that object, which is the basis of its 
essential difierence. The Logos is the personified es- 
sence of religion. Hence the definition of God as the 
essence of feeling, has its complete truth only in the 
Logos. 

God as God is feeling as yet shut up, hidden ; only 
Christ is the unclosed, open feeling or heart. In 
Christ feeling is first perfectly certain of itself, and 
assured beyond doubt of the truth and divinity of its 
own nature ; for Christ denies nothing to feeling ; he 
fulfils all its prayers. In God the soul is still silent 
as to what affects it most closely, — it only sighs ; but 
in Christ it speaks out fully ; here it has no longer 
any reserves. To him who only sighs, wishes are still 
attended with disquietude ; he rather complains that 



192 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

what he wishes is not, than openly, positively declares 
what he wishes ; he is still in doubt whether his wish- 
es have the force of law. But in Christ, all anxiety 
of the soul vanishes ; he is the sighing soul passed 
into a song of triumph over its complete satisfaction ; 
he is the joyful certainty of feeling that its wishes 
hidden in God have truth and reality, the actual vic- 
tory over death, over all the powers of the world and 
Nature, the resurrection no longer merely hoped for, 
but already accomplished ; he is the heart released 
from all oppressive limits, from all sufferings, — 
the soul in perfect blessedness, the Godhead made 
visible.* 

To see God is the highest wish, the highest triumph 
of the heart. Christ is this wish, this triumph, fulfil- 
led. God, as an object of thought only, i.e., God as 
God, is always a remote being ; the relation to him is 
an abstract one, like that relation of friendship in 
which we stand to a man who is distant from us, and 
personally unknown to us. However his works, the 
proofs of love which he gives us, may make his nature 
present to us, there always remains an unfilled void, 
— the heart is unsatisfied, we long to see him. So long 
as we have not met a being face to face, we are always 
in doubt whether he be really such as we imagine him ; 
actual presence alone gives final confidence, perfect 
repose. Christ is God known personally ; Christ, 
therefore, is the blessed certainty that God is what the 
soul desires and needs him to be. God, as the object 

* " Because God has given us his Son, he has with him given us every- 
thing, whether it be called devil, sin, hell, heaven, righteousness, life : all, 
all must be ours, because the Son is ours as a gift, in whom all else is 
included." — Luther (T. xv. p. 311.) "The best part of the resurrection 
has already happened ; Christ, the head of all Christendom, has passed 
through dciitli. and risen from the dead. Moreover, the most excellent 
part of me, my soul, has likewise; passed through death, and is with Christ 
in the heavenly being. What harm, then, can death and the grave do 
me?" — Luther (T. xvi. p. 235.) "A Christian man has equal power 
with Christ, has fellowship with him and a common tenure. (T. xiii.p. 
648.) u Whoever cleaves to Christ, has as much as he." (T. xvi. 
p. 574. N 



THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST. 193 

of prayer, is indeed already a human being, since lie 
sympathizes with human misery, grants human wishes ; 
but still he is not yet an object to the religious con- 
sciousness as a real man. Hence, only in Christ is the 
last wish of religion realized, the mystery of religious 
feeling solved :■ — solved however in the language of 
imagery proper to religion, for what God is in essence, 
that Christ is in actual appearance. So far the Christ- 
ian religion may justly be called the absolute religion. 
That God who in himself is nothing else than the na- 
ture of man, should also have a real existence as such, 
should be as man an object to the consciousness — this 
is the goal of religion. And this the Christian reli- 
gion has attained in the incarnation of God, which is 
by no means a transitory act, for Christ remains man 
even after his ascension, — man in heart and man in 
form, only that his body is no longer an earthly one, 
liable to suffering. 

The incarnations of the Deity with the orientals — 
the Hindoos for example, have no such intense mean- 
ing as the Christian incarnation ; just because they 
happen often they become indifferent, they lose their 
value. The manhood of God is his personality ; the 
proposition, God is a personal being, means : God is 
a human being, God is a man. Personality is an ab- 
straction, which has reality only in an actual man.* 
The idea which lies at the foundation of the incarna- 
tions of God is therefore infinitely better conveyed by 
one incarnation, one personality. Where God ap- 
pears in several persons successively, these personali- 
ties are evanescent. What is required is a permanent, 
an exclusive personality. Where there are many in- 
carnations, room is given for inumerable others ; the 
imagination is not restrained ; and even those incar- 

* This exhibits clearly the untruthfulness and vanity of the modern 
speculations concerning the personality of God, If you are not ashamed 
of a personal God, do not he ashamed of a corporeal God. An abstract 
colourless personality, a personality without flesh and blood, is an empty 
shade. 

X 



194 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

cations which are already real pass into the category 
of the merely possible and conceivable, into the 
category of fancies, or of mere appearances. But 
where one personality is exclusively believed in and 
contemplated, this at once impresses with the power 
of an historical personality ; imagination is done away 
with, the freedom to imagine others is renounced. 
This one personality presses on me the belief in its 
reality. The characteristic of real personality is pre- 
cisely exclusiveness, — the Leibnitzian principle of 
distinction, namely, that no one existence is exactly 
like another. The tone, the emphasis, with which 
the one personality is expressed, produces such an 
effect on the feelings, that it presents itself immedi- 
ately as a real one, and is converted from an ob- 
ject of the imagination into an object of historical 
knowledge. 

Longing is the necessity of feeling ; and feeling longs 
for a personal God. But this longing after the per- 
sonality of God is true, earnest, and profound, only 
when it is the longing for one personality, when it is 
satisfied with one. With the plurality of persons, the 
truth of the want vanishes, and personality becomes a 
mere luxury of the imagination. But that which op- 
erates with the force of necessity, operates with the 
force of reality on man. That which to the feelings 
is a necessary being, is to them immediately a real 
being. Longing says : There must be a personal God, 
i. e., it cannot be that there is not ; satisfied feeling 
says : He is. The guarantee of his existence lies for 
feeling in its sense of the necessity of his existence ; 
the necessity of the satisfaction in the force of the 
want. Necessity knows no law besides itself; neces- 
sity breaks iron. Feeling knows no other necessity 
than its own, than the necessity of feeling, than long- 
ing ; it holds in extreme horror the necessity of Nature, 
the necessity of reason. Thus to feeling, a subjective, 
sympathetic, personal God is necessary; but* it de- 
mands one personality alone, and this an historical, 



THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST. 195 

real one. Only when it is satisfied in the unity of 
personality has feeling any concentration ; plurality 
dissipates it. 

But as the truth of personality is unity, and as the 
truth of unity is reality, so the truth of real personality 
is — Uood. The last proof, announced with peculiar 
emphasis by the author of the fourth gospel, that the 
visible person of God was no phantasm, no illusion, 
but a real man, is, that blood flowed from his side on 
the cross. If the personal God has a true sympathy 
with distress, he must himself suffer distress. Only in 
his suffering lies the assurance of his reality ; only on 
this depends the impressiveness of the incarnation. 
To see God does not satisfy feeling ; the eyes give no 
sufficient guarantee. The truth of vision is confirmed 
only by touch. But as subjectively touch, so objectively 
the capability of being touched, palpability, passibility, 
is the last criterion of reality ; hence the passion of 
Christ is the highest confidence, the highest self enjoy- 
ment, the highest consolation of feeling ; for only in 
the blood of Christ is the thirst for a personal, that 
is, a human, sympathizing, tender God, allayed. 

" Wherefore we hold it to be a pernicious error 
when such (namely, divine) majesty is taken away from 
Christ according to his manhood, thereby depriving 
Christians of their highest consolation, which they 
have in ... . the promise of the presence of their 
Head, King and High Priest, who has promised them 
that not his mere Godhead, which to us poor sinners 
is as a consuming fire to dry stubble, but He, He, the 
Man — who has spoken with us, who has proved all sor- 
rows in the human form which he took upon him, who 
therefore can have fellow-feeling with us as his brethren, 
— that He will be with us in all our need, according to 
the nature whereby he is our brother, and we are flesh 
of his flesh."* 

It is superficial to say that Christianity is not the 

* Concordienb. Erklar. Art. 8. 

12 



196 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

religion of one personal God. but of three personalties. 
These three personalties have certainly an existence 
in dogma ; but even there the personality of the Holy 
Spirit is only an arbitrary decision which is con- 
tradicted by impersonal definitions, as for example 
that the Holy Spirit is the gift of the Father and 
Son.* 

Already the very " procession " of the Holy Ghost 
presents an evil prognostic for his personality, for a 
personal being is produced only by generation, not by 
an indefinite emanation or by spiratio. And even the 
Father, as the representative of the rigorous idea of 
the Godhead, is a personal being only according to 
opinion and assertion, not according to his definitions : 
he is an abstract idea, a purely rationalistic being. 
Only Christ is the plastic personality. To personality 
belongs form : form is the reality of personality. — 
Christ alone is the personal God ; he is the real God 
of Christians, a truth which cannot be too often re- 
peated, t In him alone is concentrated the Christian 
religion, the essence of religion in general. He alone 

* This was excellently shown by Faustus Socinus. See his Defens. 
Animadv. in Assert. Theol. Coll. Posnan. de trino et uno Deo. Ireno- 
poli, 1656. c. 11. 

f Let the reader examine, with reference to this, the writings of the 
Christian orthodox theologians against the heterodox ; for example, 
against the Socinians. Modern theologians, indeed, agree with the latter, 
11 known, in pronouncing the divinity of Christ as accepted by 
the Church to be unbiblical; but it is undeniably the characteristic prin- 
ciple of Christianity, and even if it does not stand in the Bible in the form 
which i- given to it by dogma, it is nevertheless a necessary consequence 
of what is found in the Bible. A being who is the fulness of the godhead 
bodily, who is omniscient (John xvi. 80) and almighty (raises the dead, 
works miracles.) who is before all things, both in time and rank, who has 
life in himself (though an imparted life) like as the father has life in him- 
self, — what, if we follow Out tie- Consequences, can such a being be, but 
God? "Cfarid rith the Father in will;" — but unity of will pre- 

supposes unity of nature. " ( Jhrist ifl the ambassador, the representative 
rf God;" — hut God can only be represented by a divine being. I can 
only ehooee a- my repfetentatiYe one in whom I find the same or similar 
qualities as in myself; otherwise I belie myself. 



THE MYSTERY OP THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST. 197 

meets the longing for a personal God ; he alone is an 
existence identical with the nature of feeling ; on him 
alone are heaped all the joys of the imagination, and 
all the sufferings of the heart ; in him alone are feel- 
ing and imagination exhausted. Christ is the blending 
in one of feeling and imagination. 

Christianity is distinguished from other religions 
by this, that in other religions the heart and imagina- 
tion are divided, in Christianity they coincide. Here 
the imagination does not wander, left to itself ; it fol- 
lows the leadings of the heart ; it describes a circle, 
whose centre is feeling. Imagination is here limited 
by the wants of the heart, it only realizes the wishes 
of feeling, it has reference only to the one thing need- 
ful ; in brief, it has, at least generally, a practical, 
concentric tendency, not a vagrant, merely poetic one. 
The miracles of Christianity — no product of free, 
spontaneous activity, but conceived in the bosom of 
yearning, necessitous feeling — place us immediately 
on the ground of common, real life ; they act on the 
emotional man with irresistible force, because they 
have the necessity of feeling on their side. The power 
of imagination is here at the same time the power of 
the heart, — imagination is only the victorious, triumph- 
ant heart. 

With the orientals, with the Greeks, imagination, 
untroubled by the wants of the heart, revelled in the 
enjoyment of earthly splendour and glory ; in Chris- 
tianity, it descended from the palace of the gods into 
the abode of poverty, where only want rules, — it 
humbled itself under the sway of the heart. But the 
more it limited itself in extent, the more intense be- 
came its strength. The wantonness of the Olympian 
gods could not maintain itself before the rigorous 
necessity of the heart ; but imagination is omnipotent 
when it has a bond of union with the heart. And 
this bond between the freedom of the imagination and 
the necessity of the heart is Christ. All things are 
subject to Christ ; he is the Lord of the world who 



198 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

does with it what He will : but this unlimited power 
over Nature is itself again subject to the power of the 
heart ; — Christ commands raging Nature to be still, 
but only that he may hear the sighs of the needy. 



CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 199 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND 
HEATHENISM. 



Christ is the omnipotence of subjectivity, the heart 
released from all the bonds and laws of Nature, the 
soul excluding the world, and concentrated only on 
itself, the reality of all the heart's wishes, the Easter 
festival of the heart, the ascent to heaven of the im- 
agination : — Christ therefore is the distinction of 
Christianity from Heathenism. 

In Christianty, man was concentrated only on him- 
self, he unlinked himself from the chain of sequences 
in the system of the universe, he made himself a self- 
sufficing whole, an absolute, extra-and supramundane 
being. Because he no longer regarded himself as a 
being immanent in the world, because he severed him- 
self from connexion with it, he felt himself an unlimit- 
ed being — (for the sole limit of subjectivity is the 
world, is objectivity), — he had no longer any reason 
to doubt the truth and validity of his subjective wishes 
and feelings. 

The heathens, on the contrary, not shutting out Na- 
ture by retreating within themselves, limited their 
subjectivity by the contemplation of the world. Highly 
as the ancients estimated the intelligence, the reason, 
they were yet liberal and objective enough, theoreti- 
cally as well as practically to allow that which they 
distinguished from mind, namely, matter, to live, and 
even to live eternally ; the Christians evinced their 
theoretical as well as practical intolerance in their 
belief that they secured the eternity of their subjec- 



200 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

tive life, only by annihilating, as in the doctrine of the 
destruction of the world, the opposite of subjectivity — 
Nature. The ancients were free from themselves, but 
their freedom was that of indifference towards them- 
selves ; the Christians were free from Nature, but their 
freedom was not that of reason, not true freedom, 
which limits itself by the contemplation of the world, 
by Nature, — it was the freedom of feeling and imagin- 
ation, the freedom of miracle. The ancients were so 
enraptured by the Cosmos, that they lost sight of them- 
selves, suffered themselves to be merged in the whole; 
the Christians despised the world; — what is the crea- 
ture compared with the Creator? what are sun, moon, 
and earth, compared with the human soul ?* The 
world passes away, but man, nay, the individual, per- 
sonal man is eternal. If the Christians severed man 
from all community with Nature, and hence fell into 
the extreme of an arrogant fastidiousness, which stig- 
matized the remotest comparison of man with the 
brutes as an impious violation of human dignity ; the 
heathens, on the other hand, fell into the opposite ex- 
treme, into that spirit of depreciation which abolishes 
the distinction between man and the brute, or even, as 
was the case, for example, with Celsus, the opponent 
of Christianity, degrades man beneath the brute. 

But the heathens considered man not only in con- 
nexion with the universe ; they considered the indivi- 
dual man, in connexion with other men, as member of 
a commonwealth. They rigorously distinguished the 
individual from the species, the individual as a part from 
the race as a whole, and they subordinated the part 
to the whole. Men pass away, but mankind remains, 
says a heathen philosopher. " Wilt thou grieve over 

* " How much better is it, that I should lose the whole world than 
that I should lose (Jod, who created the world, and can create innumer- 
able worlds, who is better than a hundred thousand, than innumerable 
worlds ? For what sort of a comparison is that of the temporal with the 

eternal ? One soul is better that the whole world." — Luther 

(T. xix.p. 21). 



CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 201 

the loss of thy daughter? 77 writes Sulpiciusto Cicero. 
" Great, renowned cities and empires have passed 
away, and thou behavest thus at the death of an 
liomunculus, a little human being ! Where is thy phi- 
losophy ? 77 The idea of man as an individual was to 
the ancients a secondary one, attained through the 
idea of the species. Though they thought highly of 
the race, highly of the excellences of mankind, highly 
and sublimely of the intelligence, they nevertheless 
thought slightly of the individual. Christianity, on 
the contrary, cared nothing for the species, and had 
only the individual in its eye and mind. Christianity — 
not, certainly, the Christianity of the present day, 
which has incorporated with itself the culture of hea- 
thenism, and has preserved only the name and some 
general positions of Christianity — is the direct oppo- 
site of heathenism, and only when it is regarded as 
such is it truly comprehended, and untravestied by 
arbitrary speculative interpretation ; it is true so far 
as its opposite is false and false so far as its opposite 
is true. The ancients sacrificed the individual to the 
species ; the Christians sacrificed the species to the 
individual. Or, heathenism conceived the individual 
only as a part in distinction from the whole of the 
species ; Christianity, on the contrary, conceived the 
individual only in immediate, undistinguishable unity 
with the species. 

To Christianity the individual was the object of an 
immediate Providenee, that is, an immediate object of 
the Divine Being. The heathens believed in a Provi- 
dence for the individual, only through his relation to 
the race, through law, through the order of the world, 
and thus only in a mediate, natural, and not miracu- 
lous Providence ;* but the Christians left out the 
intermediate process, and placed themselves in imme- 
diate connexion with the prescient, all-embracing, uni- 

* It is true that the heathen philosophers also, as Plato, Socrates, the 
Stoics (see e. g. J. Lipsius, Physiol. Stoic. 1. i. diss, xi.) believed that the 
divine Providence extended not merely to the general, but also to the 

i3 



202 THE ESSENCE OP CHRISTIANITY. 

versa! Being ; u e., they immediately identified the 
individual with the universal being. 

But the idea of deity coincides with the idea of hu- 
manity. All divine attributes, all the attributes which 
make God God, are attributes of the species — attri- 
butes, which in the individual are limited, but the limits 
of which are abolished in the essence of the species, 
and even in its existence, in so far as it has its com- 
plete existence only in all men taken together. My 
knowledge, my will, is limited; but my limit is not the 
limit of another man, to say nothing of mankind ; what 
is difficult to me is easy to another ; what is im- 
possible, inconceivable, to one age, is to the com- 
ing age conceivable and possible. My life is bound to 
a limited time ; not so the life of humanity. The his- 
tory of mankind consists of nothing else than a contin- 
uous and progressive conquest of limits, which at a 
given time pass for the limits of humanity, and there- 
fore for absolute insurmountable limits. But the future 
always unveils the fact, that the alleged limits of the 
species were only limits of individuals. The most 
striking proofs of this are presented by the history of 
philosophy and of physical science. It would be highly 
interesting and instructive to write a history of the 
sciences entirely from this point of view, in order to 
exhibit in all its vanity the presumptuous notion of 
the individual that he can set limits to his race. Thus 
the species is unlimited; the individual alone limited. 

But the sense of limitation is painful, and hence the 
individual frees himself from it by the contemplation 
of the perfect Being ; in this contemplation he possesses 
what otherwise is wanting to him. With the Christ- 
ians God is nothing else than the immediate unity of 

particular, the individual ; but they identified Providence with Nature, 
Law, Necessity. The Stoics, who were the orthodox speculatists of hea- 
thenism, did indeed believe in miracles wrought by Providence (Cic. de 
Nat. Dcor. 1. ii. and de Divinat 1. i.) ; hut their miracles had no such 

supranaturaliMir significance oi those of Christianity, though they also 
appealed to the supranaturalistic axiom: " Nihil est quod Deus efficero 
non possit." 



CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 203 

species and individuality, of the universal and indivi- 
dual being. God is the idea of the species as an indi- 
vidual — the idea or essence of the species, which as a 
species, as universal being, as the totality of all per- 
fections, of all attributes or realities, freed from all 
the limits which exist in the consciousness and feeling 
of the individual, is at the same time again an indivi- 
dual, personal being. Ipse suum esse est. Essence and 
existence are in God identical ; which means nothing 
else than that he is the idea, the essence of the species, 
conceived immediately as an existence, an individual. 
The highest idea on the stand-point of religion is : 
God does not love, he is himself love ; he does not live, 
he is life; he is not just, but justice itself ; not a person, 
but personality itself, — the species, the idea, as imme- 
diately a concrete existence.* 

Because of this immediate unity of the species with 
individuality, this concentration of all that is univer- 
sal and real in one personal being, God is a deeply 
moving object, enrapturing to the imagination ; 
whereas, the idea of humanity has little power over the 
feelings, because humanity is only an abstraction ; and 
the reality which presents itself to us in distinction 
from this abstraction, is the multitude of separate, 
limited individuals. In God, on the contrary, feeling 
has immediate satisfaction, because here all is em- 
braced in one, i. e., because here the species has an 
immediate existence, — is an individuality. God is love, 
is justice, as itself a subject ; he is the perfect universal 
being as one being, the infinite extension of the species 
as an all-comprehending unity. But God is only man's 
intuition of his own nature ; thus the Christians are dis- 
tinguished from the heathens in this, that they imme- 
diately identify the individual with the species — that 
with them the individual has the significance of the 
species, the individual by himself is held to be the per- 

* " Dicimur amare et Deus ; dicimur nosse et Deus. Et multa in 
lranc modum. Sed Deus amat ut charitas, novit ut Veritas etc." — Ber- 
nard, (de Consider. 1. t.) 



204 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

feet representative of the species — that they deify the 
human individual, make him the absolute being. 

Especially characteristic is the difference between 
Christianity and Heathenism concerning the relation 
of the individual to the intelligence, to the understand- 
ing, to the vou^. The Christians individualized the 
understanding, the heathens made it a universal 
essence. To the heathens, the understanding, the in- 
telligence, was the essence of man ; to the Christians, 
it was only a part of themselves. To the heathens 
therefore only the intelligence, the species, to the 
Christians the individual, was immortal, i. e., divine. 
Hence follows the further difference between heathen 
and Christian philosophy. 

The most unequivocal expression, the characteristic 
symbol of this immediate identity of the species and 
individuality in Christianity, is Christ, the real God of 
the Christians. Christ is the ideal of humanity become 
existent, the compendium of all moral and divine per- 
fections to the exclusion of all that is negative ; pure, 
heavenly, sinless man, the typical man, the Adam Kad- 
mon ; not regarded as the totality of the species, of 
mankind, but immediately as one individual, one 
person. Christ, i. e., the Christian, religious Christ, 
is therefore not the central, but the terminal point of 
history. The Christians expected the end of the 
world, the close of history. In the Bible, Christ him- 
self, in spite of all the falsities and sophisms of our 
exegetists, clearly prophesies the speedy end of the 
world. History rests only on the distinction of 
the individual from the race. Where this dis- 
tinction ceases history ceases ; the very soul of his- 
tory is extinct. Nothing remains to man but the con- 
templation and appropriation of this realized Ideal, 
and the spirit of proselytism, which seeks to extend 
the prevalence of a fixed belief, — the preaching that 
God has appeared, and that the end of the world is 
at hand. 

Since the immediate identity of the species and the 



CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 205 

individual oversteps the limits of reason and Nature, 
it followed of course that this universal^ ideal indivi- 
dual was declared to be a transcendent, supernatural, 
heavenly being. It is therefore a perversity to attempt 
to deduce from reason the immediate identity of the 
species and individual, for it is only the imagination 
which effects this identity, the imagination to which 
nothing is impossible, and which is also the creator of 
miracles ; for the greatest of miracles is the being 
who while he is an individual is at the same time the 
ideal, the species, humanity in the fulness of its per- 
fection and infinity, i. e., the Godhead. Hence it is 
also a perversity to adhere to the biblical or dogmatic 
Christ, and yet to thrust aside miracle. If the prin- 
ciple be retained, wherefore deny its necessary conse- 
quences ? 

The total absence of the idea of the species in Chris- 
tianity is especially observable in its characteristic 
doctrine of the universal sinfulness of men. For there 
lies at the foundation of this doctrine the demand that 
the individual shall not be an individual, a demand 
which again is based on the presupposition that the 
individual by himself is a perfect being, is by himself 
the adequate presentation or existence of the species.** 
Here is entirely wanting the objective perception, the 
consciousness, that the thou belongs to the perfection 
of the 1, that men are required to constitute humanity, 
that only men taken together are what man should 
and can be. All men are sinners. Granted : but 
they are not all sinners in the same way ; on the con- 
trary, there exists a great and essential difference be- 
tween them. One man is inclined to falsehood, ano- 
ther is not ; he would rather give up his life than 

* It is true that in one sense the individual is the absolute — in the 
phraseology of Leibnitz, the mirror of the universe, of the infinite. But 
in so far as there are many individuals, each is only a single and, as 
such, a finite mirror of the infinite. It is true also, in opposition to the 
abstraction of a sinless man, that each individual regarded in himself is 
perfect, and only by comparison imperfect, for each is what alone he 
can be. 



206 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

break his word or tell a lie ; the third has a propen- 
sity to intoxication, the fourth to licentiousness ; 
while the fifth, whether by favour of Nature, or from 
the energy of his character, exhibits none of these 
vices. Thus, in the moral as well as the physical and 
intellectual elements, men compensate for each other, 
so that taken as a whole they are as they should be, 
they present the perfect man. 

Hence intercourse ameliorates and elevates ; — in- 
voluntarily and without disguise, man is different 
in intercourse from what he is when alone. Love 
especially works wonders, and the love of the sexes 
most of all. Man and woman are the complement 
of each other, and thus united they first present 
the species, the perfect man.- Without species, love 
is inconceivable. Love is nothing else than the self- 
consciousness of the species as evolved within the dif- 
ference of sex. In love, the reality of the species, 
which otherwise is only a thing of reason, an object 
of mere thought, becomes a matter of feeling, a truth 
of feeling ; for in love, man declares himself unsatis- 
fied in his individuality taken by itself, he postulates 
the existence of another as a need of the heart ; he 
reckons another as part of his own being ; he declares 
the life which he has through love to be the truly 
human life, corresponding to the idea of man, i. e., of 
the species. The individual is defective, imperfect, 
weak, needy ; but love is strong, perfect, contented, 
free from wants, self sufficing, infinite ; because in 
it the self-consciousness of the individuality is the 
mysterious self-consciousness of the perfection of the 
race. But this result of love is produced by friend- 
ship also, at least where it is intense, where it is a 

* With the Hindoos (Inst, of Menu) he alone is "a perfect man who 
consists of three united persons, his wife, himself and his son. For man 
rind wife, and father and son, are one/' The Adam ol the Old Testa- 
ment also is Incomplete without woman ; he feels his need of her. But 
lam of the New Testament, the Christian, heavenly Adam, the 
Adam who is constituted with a view t.» the destruction of this world, 
has no longer any sexual impulses or fund 



CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 207 

religion/* as it was with the ancients. Friends com- 
pensate for each other ; friendship is a means of virtue, 
and more : it is itself virtue, dependent however on 
participation. Friendship can only exist between the 
virtuous, as the ancients said. But it cannot be based 
on perfect similarity ; on the contrary, it requires 
diversity, for friendship rests on a desire for self-com- 
pletion. One friend obtains through the other what 
he does not himself possess. The virtues of the one 
atone for the failings of the other. Friend justifies friend 
before God. However faulty a man may be, it is proof 
that there is a germ of good in him if he has worthy 
men for his friends. If I cannot be myself perfect, I 
yet at Least love virtue, perfection in others. If there- 
fore I am called to account for my sins, weaknesses 
and faults, I interpose as advocates, as mediators, the 
virtues of my friend. How barbarous, how unreason- 
able would it be to condemn me for sins which I 
doubtless have committed, but which I have myself 
condemned, in loving my friends, who are free from 
these sins ! 

But if friendship and love, which themselves are only 
subjective realizations of the species, make out of 
singly imperfect beings an at least relatively perfect 
whole, how much more do the sins and failings of in- 
dividuals vanish in the species itself, which has its 
adequate existence only in the sum total of mankind, 
and is therefore only an object of reason ! Hence the 
lamentation over sin is found only where the human 
individual regards himself in his individuality as a 
perfect, complete being, not needing others for the 
realization of the species, of the perfect man ; where 
instead of the consciousness of the species has been 
substituted the exclusive self-consciousness of the indi- 
vidual ; where the individual does not recognise him- 



* " Has sane vires amicitise mortis contemptum ingenerare 

potuerunt : quibus pene tantum venerationis, quantum Deorum immor- 
talium ceremoniis debetur. Hlis enim publica salus bis privata conti- 
netur,'' — Valerius Max. 1. iv. c. 7. 



208 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

self as a part of mankind, but identifies himself with • 
the species, and for this reason makes his own sins, 
limits and weaknesses, the sins, limits and weaknesses 
of mankind in general. Nevertheless man cannot lose 
the consciousness of the species, for his self-conscious- 
ness is essentially united to his consciousness of ano- 
ther than himself. Where therefore the species is not 
an object to him as a species, it will be an object to 
him as God. He supplies the absence of the idea of 
the species by the idea of God, as the being who is 
free from the limits and wants which oppress the indi- 
vidual, and, in his opinion (since he identifies the spe- 
cies with the individual), the species itself. But this 
perfect being, free from the limits of the individual, is 
nothing else than the species, which reveals the infi- 
nitude of his nature in this, that it is realized in infi- 
nitely numerous and various individuals. If all men 
were absolutely alike, there would then certainly be 
no distinction between the race and the individual. 
But in that case the existence of many men would be a 
pure superfluity ; a single man would have achieved 
the ends of the species. In the one who enjoyed the 
happiness of existence, all would have had their com- 
plete substitute. 

Doubtless the essence of man is one : but this essence 
is infinite ; its real existence is therefore an infinite, 
reciprocally compensating variety, which reveals the 
riches of this essence. Unity in essence is multiplicity 
in existence. Between me and another being — and 
this other is the representative of the species, even 
though he is only one, for he supplies to me the want 
of many others, lias for me a universal significance, is 
the deputy of mankind, in whose name he speaks to 
me. an isolated individual, so that, when united only 
with one, 1 have a participated, a human life ; — be- 
tween me and another human being there is an essen- 
tial, qualitative distinction. The other is my thou t — 
the relation being reciprocal, my alter ego, man objec- 
tive to me, the revelation of my own nature, the eye 



CHRISTIANTY AND HEATHENISM. 209 

seeing itself. In another I first have the consciousness 
of humanity ; through him I first learn, I first feel, that 
I am a man : in my love for him it is first clear to me 
that he belongs to me and I to him, that we two can- 
not be without each other, that only community con- 
stitutes humanity. But morally, also, there is a qual- 
itative, critical distinction between the I and them. 
My fellow-man is my objective conscience ; he makes 
my failings a reproach to me, even when he does not 
expressly mention them, he is my personified feeling of 
shame. The consciousness of the moral law, of right, 
of propriety, of truth itself, is indissolubly united with 
my consciousness of another than myself. That is true 
in which another agrees with me, — agreement is the 
first criterion of truth ; but only because the species 
is the ultimate measure of truth. That which I think 
only according to the standard of my individuality, is 
not binding on another, it can be conceived other- 
wise, it is an accidental, merely subjective view. But 
that which I think according to the standard of the 
species, I think as man in general only can think, and 
consequently as every individual must think if he 
thinks normally, in accordance with law, and there- 
fore truly. That is true which agrees with the nature 
of the species, that is false which contradicts it. 
There is no other rule of truth. But my fellow-man 
is to me the representative of the species, the substi- 
tute of the rest, nay his judgment may be of more 
authority with me than the judgment of the innumer- 
able multitude. Let the fanatic make disciples as the 
sand on the sea-shore ; the sand is still sand, mine be 
the pearl — a judicious friend. The agreement of 
others is therefore my criterion of the normalness, 
the universality, the truth of my thoughts. I cannot 
so abstract myself from myself as to judge myself with 
perfect freedom and disinterestedness ; but another 
has an impartial judgment ; through him I correct, 
complete, extend my own judgment, my own taste, my 
own knowledge. In short, there is a qualitative, cri- 



210 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

tical difference between men. But Christianity ex- 
tinguishes this qualitative distinction ; it sets the same 
stamp on all men alike, and regards them as one and 
the same individual, because it knows no distinction 
between the species and the individual : it has one 
and the same means of salvation for all men, it sees 
one and the same original sin in all. 

Because Christianity thus, from exaggerated sub- 
jectivity, knows nothing of the species, in which alone 
lies the redemption, the justification, the reconcilia- 
tion and cure of the sins and deficiencies of the indi- 
vidual, it needed a supernatural and peculiar, nay a 
personal, subjective aid in order to overcome sin. If 
I alone am the species, if no other, that is, no qualita- 
tively different men exist, or, which is the same thing, 
if there is no distinction between me and others, if we 
are all perfectly alike, if my sins are not neutralized 
by the opposite qualities of other men : then assuredly 
my sin is a blot of shame which cries up to heaven ; a 
revolting horror which can be exterminated only by 
extraordinary, superhuman, miraculous means. Hap- 
pily, however, there is a natural reconciliation. My 
fellow-man is per se 1 the mediator between me and the 
sacred idea of the species. Homo homini Deus est. My 
sin is made to shrink within its limits, is thrust back 
into its nothingness, by the fact that it is only mine, 
and not that of my fellows. 



CELIBACY AND MONACHISM. 211 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE CHRISTIAN SIGNIFICANCE OF VOLUNTARY 
CELIBACY AND MONACHISM. 



The idea of man as a species, and with it the signi- 
ficance of the life of the species, of humanity as a whole, 
vanished as Christianity became dominant. Herein 
we have a new confirmation of the position advanced, 
that Christianity does not contain within itself the 
principle of culture. Where man immediately identi- 
fies the species with the individual, and posits this 
identity as his highest being, as God, where the idea 
of humanity is thus an object to him only as the idea 
of Godhead, there the need of culture has vanished ; 
man has all in himself, all in his God, consequently he 
has no need to supply his own deficiencies by others 
as the representatives of the species, or by the con- 
templation of the world generally ; and this need is 
alone the spring of culture. The individual man attains 
his end by himself alone ; he attains it in God, — God 
is himself the attained goal, the realized highest aim 
of humanity : but God is present to each individual 
separately. God only is the want of the Christian ; 
others, the human race, the world, are not necessary 
to him ; he has not the inward need of others. God 
fills to me the place of the species, of my fellow-men ; 
yes, when I turn away from the world, when I am in 
isolation, I first truly feel my need of God, I first have 
a lively sense of his presence, I first feel what God is, 
and what he ought to be to me. It is true that the 
religious man has need also of fellowship, of edification 
in common ; but this need of others is always in itself 



212 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

something extremely subordinate. The salvation of 
the soul is the fundamental idea, the main point in 
Christianity ; and this salvation lies only in God, only 
in the concentration of the mind on Him. Activity 
for others is required, is a condition of salvation ; but 
the ground of salvation is God, immediate reference 
in all tilings to God. And even activity for others 
has only a religious significance, has reference only to 
God, as its motive and end, is essentially only an ac- 
tivity for God, — for the glorifying of his name, the 
spreading abroad of his praise. But God is absolute 
subjectivity, — subjectivity separated from the world, 
above the world, set free from matter, severed from 
the life of the species, and therefore from the distinc- 
tion of sex. Separation from the world, from matter, 
from the life of the species, is therefore the essential 
aim of Christianity.* And this aim had its visible, 
practical realization in Monachism. 

It is a self-delusion to attempt to derive monachism 
from the east. At least, if this derivation is to be 
accepted, they who maintain it should be consistent 
enough to derive the opposite tendency of Christen- 
dom, not from Christianity, but from the spirit of the 
western nations, the occidental nature in general. 
But how, in that case, shall we explain the monastic 
enthusiasm of the west? Monachism must rather be 
derived directly from Christianity itself: it was a nec- 
essary consequence of the belief in heaven, promised 
to mankind by Christianity. Where the heavenly life 
is a truth, the earthly life is a lie ; where imagination 
is all, reality is nothing. To him who believes in an 
eternal heavenly life, the present life loses its value, 
— or rather, it has already lost its value : belief in the 

* " The lift for God Ifl not this natural life, which 18 subject to decay. 

Oaght ire not then to sigh after future things, and be averse to 

all these temporal thing! ? .... Wherefore we should find consolation 
in heartily despising this life and this world, and from our hearts sigh for 
and desire the future honour and glory of eternal life. " — Luther (Th. i. 
s. 406, 467). 



CELIBACY AND MONACHISM. 213 

heavenly life is belief in the worthlessness and nothing- 
ness of this life. I cannot represent to myself the 
future life without longing for it, without casting down 
a look of compassion or contempt on this pitiable 
earthly life, and the heavenly life can be no object, no 
law of faith, without, at the same time, being a law of 
morality : it must determine my actions,* at least if 
my life is to be in accordance with my faith : I ought 
not to cleave to the transitory things of this earth. 
I ought not ; — but neither do I wish ; for what are all 
things here below compared with the glory of the 
heavenly life ?t 

It is true that the quality of that life depends on the 
quality, the moral condition of this ; but morality is 
itself determined by the faith in eternal life. The 
morality corresponding to the super-terrestrial life is 
simply separation from the world, the negation of this 
life : and the practical attestation of this spiritual sep- 
aration is the monastic life.J Everything must ulti- 
mately take an external form, must present itself to 
the senses. An inward disposition must become an 
outward practice. The life of the cloister, indeed 
ascetic life in general, is the heavenly life as it is rea- 
lized and can be realized here below. If my soul be- 
longs to heaven, ought I, nay, can I belong to the earth 
with my body ? The soul animates the body. But if 

* "Eo dirigendus est spiritus, quo aliquando est iturus. " — Meditat. 
Sacrse Joh. Gerhardi. Med. 46. 

f " Affectanti coelestia, terrena non sapiunt. ^Eternis inhianti, fasti- 
dio sunt transitoria." — Bernard. (Epist. Ex persona Helise monachi ad 
parentes). " Nihil nostra refert in hoc sevo, nisi de eo quam celeriter 
excedere. " — Tertullian (Apol. adv. Gentes, c. 41). " Wherefore a 
Christian man should rather he advised to hear sickness with patience, 
yea, even to desire that death should come, — the sooner the "better. For, 
as St. Cyprian says, nothing is more for the advantage of a Christian, 
than soon to die. But we rather listen to the pagan Juvenal, when he 
says : ' Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano.' " — Luther (Th. 
iv. s. 15). 

X " Hie perfectus est qui mente et corpore a seculo est elongatus." — 
De Modo "bene Vivendi ad Sororem, s. vii. (Among the spurious writings 
of St. Bernard.) 



214 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the soul is in heaven, the body is forsaken, dead, and 
thus the medium, the organ of connexion between the 
world and the soul is annihilated. Death, the sepa- 
ration of the soul from the body, at least from this 
gross, material, sinful body, is the entrance into heaven. 
But if death is the condition of blessedness and moral 
perfection, then necessarily mortification is the one 
law of morality. Moral death is the necessary antici- 
pation of natural death ; 1 say necessary, for it would 
be the extreme of immorality to attribute the obtain- 
ing of heaven to physical death, which is no moral act, 
but a natural one common to man and the brute. 
Death must therefore be exalted into a moral, a spon- 
taneous act. "I die daily," says the apostle, and this 
dictum Saint Anthony, the founder of monachism * 
made the theme of his life. 

But Christianity, it is contended, demanded only a 
spiritual freedom. True ; but what is that spiritual 
freedom which does not pass into action, which does 
not attest itself in practice ? Or dost thou believe that 
it only depends on thyself, on thy will, on thy intention, 
whether thou be free from anything? If so, thou art 
greatly in error, and hast never experienced what it 
is to be truly made free. So long as thou art in a 
given rank, profession, or relation, so long art thou, 
willingly or not, determined by it. Thy will, thy de- 
termination, frees thee only from conscious limitations 
and impressions, not from the unconscious ones which 
lie in the nature of the case. Thus we do not feel at 
home, we are under constraint, so long as we are not 
locally, physically separated from one with whom we 
have inwardly broken. External freedom is alone the 
full truth of spiritual freedom. A man who has really 
loeJ spiritual interest in earthly treasures, soon throws 
them out at window, that his heart may be thoroughly 
at liberty. What I no longer possess by inclination is 
a burden to me ; BO away with it! What affection has 
let go, the hand no longer holds fast. Only affection 

* On this subject see "Hieronymus, de Vita Paul] primi Eremitai." 



CELIBACY AND MONACHISM. 215 

gives force to the grasp ; only affection makes possession 

sacred. He who having a wife is as though he had 
her not, will do better to have no wife at all. To have 
as though one had not, is to have without the disposi- 
tion to have, is in truth not to have. And therefore 
he who says, that one ought to have a thing as though 
one had it not, merely says in a subtle, covert, cautious 
way, that one ought not to have it at all. That which 
I dismiss from my heart is no longer mine,- — it is free 
as air. St. Anthony took the resolution to renounce 
the world when he had once heard the saying, — " If 
thou wilt be perfect, go thy way, sell that thou hast 
and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in 
heaven ; and come and follow me.' ? St. Anthony gave 
the only true interpretation of this text. He went his 
way, and sold his possessions, and gave the proceeds 
to the poor. Only thus did he prove his spiri tual free- 
dom from the treasures of this world.* 

Such freedom, such truth, is certainly in contradic- 
tion with the Christianity of the present day, according 
to which the Lord has required only a spiritual free- 
dom, i. e., a freedom which demands no sacrifice, no 
energy, an illusory, self-deceptive freedom ; — a free- 
dom from earthly good, which consists in its pos- 
session and enjoyment ! For certainly the Lord said, 
"My yoke is easy." How harsh, how unreasonable 
would Christianity be, if it exacted from man the re- 
nunciation of earthly riches ! Then assuredly Chris- 
tianity would not be suited to this world. So far from 
this, Christianity is in the highest degree practical and 
judicious ; it defers the freeing oneself from the wealth 
and pleasures of this world to the moment of natural 
death ; (monkish mortification is an unchristian suicide) 
— and allots to our spontaneous activity the acquisition 

* Naturally, Christianity had only such power when, as Jerome writes 
to Demetrius, Domini nostri adhuc calehat cruor et fervebat recens in 
credentibus fides. See also on this subject G. Arnold. — Von der erstcn 
Christen Genuegsamkeit u, Verschmaehung cdles Eigennutzes, 1. c. B. iv. c. 
12, § 7— § 16. 



216 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

and enjoyment of earthly possessions. Genuine Chris- 
tians do not indeed doubt the truth of the heavenly life, 
■ — God forbid ! Therein they still agree with the an- 
cient monks : but they await that life patiently, sub- 
missive to the will of God, i. e., to their own selfish- 
ness, to the agreable pursuit of worldly enjoyment.* 
But 1 turn away with loathing and contempt from 
modern Christianity, in which the bride of Christ 
readily acquiesces in polygamy, at least in successive 
polygamy, and this in the eyes of the true Christian 
does not essentially differ from contemporaneous poly- 
gamy ; but yet at the same time — oh! shameful hypo- 
crisy ! — swears by the eternal, universally binding, irre- 
fragable, sacred truth of God's word. I turn back 
with reverence to the misconceived truth of the chaste 
monastic cell, where the soul betrothed to heaven did 
not allow itself to be wooed into faithlessness by a 
strange, earthly body ! 

The unworldly, supernatural life is essentially also 
an unmarried life. The celibate lies already, though 
not in the form of a law, in the inmost nature of Chris- 
tianity. This is sufficiently declared in the supernatural 
origin of the Saviour, — a doctrine in which unspotted 
virginity is hallowed as the saving principle, as the 
principle of the new, the Christian world. Let not 
such passages as, 4 'Be fruitful and multiply," or, "What 
God has joined together let not man put asunder," be 
urged as a sanction of marriage. The first passage 
relates, as Tertullian and Jerome have already ob- 
served, only to the unpeopled earth, not to the earth 
when filled with men, only to the beginning not to the 
end of the world, an end which Avas initiated by the 

* How far otherwise the ancient Christians ! "Difficile, imo impossibile 
est, at et prsBsentibas quiset fotaris fruatur bonis." — Hieronymus (Epist. 
Juliano). "Delicatos as, f rater, si et hie vis ^audere cum seculo et postea 
rejniare cum ChristO." — lb. (Epist. ad lleliodorum). " Ye wish to have 
both God and the creature together, and that is impossible*. Joy in (Jod 

and joy in tin- creature cannot subalsl together." — Tattler (ed. C. p. 334). 
But they were abstract Christians, And we live now in the age of con- 
cilation. Yes, truly ! 



CELIBACY AND MONACHISM. 217 

immediate appearance of God upon earth. And the 
second also refers only to marriage as an institution 
of the Old Testament. Certain Jews proposed the 
question — whether it were lawful for a man to separate 
from his wife ; and the most appropriate way of dealing 
with this question was the answer above cited. He 
who has once concluded a marriage ought to hold it 
sacred. Marriage is intrinsically an indulgence to the 
weakness or rather the strength of the flesh, an evil 
which therefore must be restricted as much as possible. 
The indissolubleness of marriage is a nimbus, a sacred 
irradiance, which expresses precisely the opposite of 
what minds, dazzled and perturbed by its lustre, seek 
beneath it. Marriage in itself is, in the sense of per- 
fected Christianity, a sin,* or rather a weakness, which 
is permitted and forgiven thee only on condition that 
thou for ever limitest thyself to a single wife. In short, 
marriage is hallowed only in the Old Testament, but 
not in the New. The New Testament knows a higher, 
a supernatural principle, the mystery of unspotted vir- 
ginity.t " He who can receive it let him receive it." 
'•The children of this world marry, and are given in 
marriage : but they which shall be accounted worthy 
to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the 
dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage : neither 
can they die any more : for they are equal unto the 
angels ; and are the children of God, being the children 
of the resurrection." Thus in heaven there is no 
marriage ; the principle of sexual love is excluded 
from heaven as an earthly, worldly principle. But the 
heavenly life is the true, perfected, eternal life of the 
Christian. Why then should I, who am destined for 
heaven, form a tie which is unloosed in my true desti- 

* " Perfectnm autem esse nolle delinquere est."-— Hieronymus (Epist. 
ad Heliodorum de laude Vitaa solit.). Let me observe once for all that I 
interpret the biblical passages concerning marriage in the sense in which 
they have been interpreted by the history of Christianity. 

f "The marriage state is nothing new or unwonted, and is lauded and 
held good even by heathens according to the judgment of reason." — 
Luther (Th. ii. p. 377a). 

K 



218 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

nation ? Why should I. who am potentially a heavenly 
being, not realize this possibility even here ?* Marriage 
is already proscribed from my mind, my heart, since it 
is expelled from heaven, the essential object of my 
faith, hope, and life. How can an earthly wife have 
a place in my heaven-filled heart? How can I divide 
my heart between God and man?t The Christian's 
love to God is not an abstract or general love such as 
the love of truth, of justice, of science ; it is a love to 
a subjective, personal God, and is therefore a subjec- 
tive, personal love. It is an essential attribute of this 
love that it is an exclusive, jealous love, for its object 
is a personal and at the same time the highest being, 
to whom no other can be compared. " Keep close to 
Jesus [Jesus Christ is the Christian's God], in life and 
in death ; trust his faithfulness : he alone can help thee, 
when all else leaves thee. Thy beloved has this quality, 
that he will suffer no rival ; he alone will have thy 
heart, will rule alone in thy soul as a king on his throne." 
— "What can the world profit thee without Jesus ? To 
be without Christ is the pain of hell ; to be with Christ, 
heavenly sweetness." — " Thou canst not live without 
a friend : but if the friendship of Christ is not more 
than all else to thee, thou wilt be beyond measure sad 
and disconsolate." — " Love everything for Jesus' sake, 
but Jesus for his own sake. Jesus Christ alone is 
worthy to be loved." — " My God, my love [my heart): 
Thou art wholly mine, and I am wholly Thine." — 
" Love hopes and trusts ever in God, even when God 
is not gracious to it [or tastes bitter, non sajnt] ; for 

we cannot live in love without sorrow For the 

sake of the beloved, the loving one must accept all 
tilings, even the hard and bitter." — "My God and my 

* •• PmwmnittMhnn est hoi qui intra Paradisnm recipi volant debere 
i iv. aqua paradisuB intactas est." — Tertullian (de Exhort. 
. l-»j. "CoBlibatui angeloroxn est imitatio." — Jo. Damasceni 
(Orthod. I-Mci, 1. iv. o, 26> 

f "Qtue non nuhir, soli Deo dat operam et ejus cura non dividitnr ; 
podiea autem, mm impeit, vitam cum Deo et cum marito dividit." — 
Clemens Alex, (rsedag. 1. ii.). 



CELIBACY AND MONACHISM. 219 

All .... In Thy presence everything is sweet to me, 
in Thy absence everything is distasteful .... Without 
Thee nothing can please nie. 77 — " when at least will 
that blessed, longed-for hour appear, when Thou wilt 
satisfy me wholly, and by all in all to me ? So long as 
this is not granted me, my joy is only fragmentary." 
■ — " When was it well with me without Thee ? or when 
was it ill with me in Thy presence ? I will rather be 
poor for Thy sake, than rich without Thee. I will 
rather be a pilgrim on earth with Thee, than the pos- 
sessor of heaven without Thee. Where Thou art is 
heaven ; death and hell where Thou art not. I long 
only for Thee. 77 — " Thou canst not serve God and at 
the same time have thy joys in earthly things : thou 
must wean thyself from all acquaintances and friends, 
and sever thy soul from all temporal consolation. Be- 
lievers in Christ should regard #iemselves, according 
to the admonition of the Apostle Peter, only as strangers 
and pilgrims on the earth. 77 - Thus, love to God as a 
personal being is a literal, strict, personal, exclusive 
love. How then can I at once love God and a mortal 
wife ? Do I not thereby place God on the same footing 
with my wife ? No ! to a soul which truly loves God, 
the love of woman is an impossibility, is adultery. 
" He that is unmarried, 77 says the apostle Paul, "careth 
for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may 
please the Lord ; but he that is married careth for the 
things that are of the world, how he may please his 
wife. 77 

The true Christian not only feels no need of culture, 
because this is a worldly principle and opposed to 
feeling ; he has also no need of (natural) love. God 
supplies to him the want of culture, and in like manner 
God supplies to him the want of love, of a wife, of a 
family. The Christian immediately identifies the 

* Thomas a Kempis de Imit. (1. ii. c. 7, c. 8, 1. iii. c. 5, c. Si, c. 53, 
c. 59.) "Felix ttla conscientia et beata virginitas, in cujus corde prseter 

amorem Christi millus alius versatur amor." — Hieronymns 

(Demetriadi, Virgini Deo consecratse). 

k2 



220 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

species with the individual ; hence he strips off the 
difference of sex as a burdensome, accidental adjunct.* 
Man and woman together first constitute the true man, 
man and woman together are the existence of the race ; 
— for their union is the source of multiplicity, the source 
of other men. Hence the man who does not deny his 
manhood, is conscious that he is only a part of a being, 
which needs another part for the making up of the whole, 
of true humanity. The Christian, on the contrary, in 
his excessive, transcendental subjectivity, conceives 
that he is, by himself, a perfect being. But the sexual 
instinct runs counter to this view ; it is in contradic- 
tion with his ideal : the Christian must therefore deny 
this instinct. 

The Christian certainly experienced the need of 
sexual love, but only as a need in contradiction with 
his heavenly destination, and merely natural, in the 
depreciatory, contemptuous sense which this word had 
in Christianity, — not as a moral, inward need, not, if 
I may so express myself, as a metaphysical, i. e., an 
essential need, which man can experience only where 
he does not separate difference of sex from himself, but 
on the contrary regards it as belonging to his inmost 
nature. Hence marriage is not holy in Christianity ; 
at least it is so only apparently, illusively ; for the na- 
tural principle of marriage, which is the love of the 
sexes, — however civil marriage may in endless instances 
contradict this, — is in Christianity an unholy thing, 
and excluded from heaven. t But that which man ex- 

* "Divisa est .... mulicr et virgo. Vide quantse felicitatis sit, quae 
et nomen sexus amiserit. Virgo jam mulier non voeatur." — Hieronymus 
(adv. llelvidium de perpet. Virg. p. 14. T. ii. Erasmus.) 

f This may be expressed as follows : Marriage has in Christianity only 
a moral, no religions significance, no religions principle and exemplar. 
It is Otherwise frith the Greeks, where, for example, u Zeus and Here are 
at iichetype of every marriage" (Creuzer, Symbol.); with the an- 
cient Parsees, where procreation, M "the multiplication of the human 
- the diminution of the empire of Ahriman," and thus a religion! 
bd and duty (/end- A vesta); with the Hindoos, where the son is the re- 
generated father. Among the Hindoos no regenerate man could assume 



CELIBACY AND MONACHISM. 221 

eludes from heaven, he excludes from his true nature. 
Heaven is his treasure-casket. Believe not in what he 
establishes on earth, what he permits and sanctions 
here : here he must accommodate himself ; here many 
things come athwart him which do not fit into his 
system ; here he shuns thy glance, for he finds himself 
among strangers who intimidiate him. But watch for 
him when he throws off his incognito, and shows him- 
self in his true dignity, his heavenly state. In heaven 
he speaks as he thinks ; there thou nearest his true 
opinion. Where his heaven is, there is his heart, — 
heaven is his heart laid open. Heaven is nothing but 
the idea of the true, the good, the valid, — of that which 
ought to be ; earth, nothing but the idea of the untrue, 
the unlawful, of that which ought not to be. The 
Christian excludes from heaven the life of the species: 
there the species ceases, there dwell only pure sexless 
individuals, " spirits ; " there absolute subjectivity 
reigns : — thus the Christian excludes the life of the 
species from his conception of the true life ; he pro- 
nounces the principle of marriage sinful, negative ; for 
the sinless, positive life is the heavenly one.* 

the rank of a Sanyassi, that is, of an anchorite absorbed in God, if he 
had not previously paid three debts, one of which was that he had had a 
legitimate son. Amongst the Christians on the contrary, at least the 
Catholics, it was a true festival of religious rejoicing when betrothed or 
even married persons — supposing that it happened with mutual consent 
— renounced the married state and sacrificed conjugal to religious love. 

* Inasmuch an the religious consciousness restores everything which it 
begins by abolishing, and the future life is ultimately nothing else than 
the present life re-established, it follows that sex must be re-established. 

" Erunt similes angelorum. Ergo homines non desinent 

ut apostolus apostolus sit et Maria Maria." — Hieronymus (ad Theodoram 
Viduam). But as the body in the other world is an incorporeal body, 
so necessarily the sex there is one without difference, i. e., a sexless sex. 



222 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN OR PERSONAL 
IMMORTALITY. 



The unwedded and ascetic life is the direct way to 
the heavenly, immortal life, for heaven is nothing else 
than life liberated from the conditions of the species, 
supernatural, sexless, absolutely subjective life. The 
belief in personal immortality has at its foundation the 
belief that difference of sex is only an external adjunct 
of individuality, that in himself the individual is a 
sexless, independently complete, absolute being. But 
he who belongs to no sex, belongs to no species ; sex 
is the cord which connects the individuality with the 
species, and he who belongs to no species, belongs 
only to himself, is an altogether independent, divine 
absolute being. Hence only when the species vanish- 
es from the consciousness is the heavenly life a cer- 
tainty. He who lives in the consciousness of the 
species, and consequently of its reality, lives also in 
the consciousness of the reality of sex. He does not 
regard it as a mechanically inserted, adventitious 
stone of stumbling, but as an inherent quality a che- 
mical constituent of his being. He indeed recognises 
himself as a man in the broader sense, but he is at the 
same time conscious of being rigorously determined 
by (he sexual distinction, which penetrates not only 
bones and marrow, but also his inmost self, the essen- 
tial mode of his thought, will, and sensation, lie 
therefore who lives in the consciousness of the species, 
who limits and determines his feelings and imagina- 
tion by the contemplation of real life, of real man, can 



THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 223 

conceive no life in which the life of the species and 
therewith the distinction of sex is abolished ; he re- 
gards the sexless individual, the heavenly spirit, as an 
agreeable figment of the imagination. 

But just as little as the real man can abstract him- 
self from the distinction of sex, so little can he abstract 
himself from his moral or spiritual constitution, which 
indeed is profoundly connected with his natural con- 
stitution. Precisely because he lives in the contem- 
plation of the whole, he also lives in the consciousness 
that he is himself no more than a part, and that he is 
what he is only by virtue of the conditions which con- 
stitute him a member of the whole, or a relative 
whole. Every one, therefore, justifiably regards his 
occupation, his profession, his art or science, as the 
highest ; for the mind of man is nothing but the essen- 
tial mode of his activity. He who is skilful in his 
profession, in his art, he who fills his post well, and is 
entirely devoted to his calling, thinks that calling the 
highest and best. How can he deny in thought, what 
he emphatically declares in act by the joyful devotion 
of all his powers ? If I despise a thing, how can I 
dedicate to it my time and faculties ? If I am com- 
pelled to do so in spite of my aversion, my activity is 
an unhappy one, for I am at war with myself. Work 
is worship. But how can I worship or serve an object, 
how can I subject myself to it, if it does not hold a 
high place in my mind ? In brief, the occupations of 
men determine their judgment, their mode of thought, 
their sentiments. And the higher the occupation, the 
more completely does a man identify himself with it. 
In general, whatever a man makes the essential aim of 
his life, he proclaims to be his soul ; for it is the princi- 
ple of motion in him. But through his aim, through 
the activity in which he realizes this aim, man is not 
only something for himself, but also something for 
others, for the general life, the species. He therefore 
who lives in the consciousness of the species as a re- 
ality, regards his existence for others, his relation to 



224 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

society, his utiftty to the public, as that existence 
which is one with the existence of his own essence — as 
his immortal existence. He lives with his whole soul, 
with his whole heart, for humanity. How can he hold 
in reserve a special existence for himself, how can he 
separate himself from mankind ? How shall he deny 
in death what he has enforced in life ? And in life 
his faith is this : Nee sibi sed toti gerritum se credere 
mundo. 

The heavenly life, or what we do not here distin- 
guish from it — personal immortality, is a characteristic 
doctrine of Christianity. It is certainly in part to be 
found among the heathen philosophers ; but with them 
it had only the significance of a subjective conception, 
because it was not connected with their fundamental 
view of thing. How contradictory, for example, are 
the expressions of the Stoics on this subject! It was 
among the Christians that personal immortality first 
found that principle, whence it follows as a neces- 
sary and obvious consequence. The contemplation of 
the world, of Nature, of the race, was always coming 
athwart the ancients ; they distinguished between the 
principle of life and the living subject, between the 
soul, the mind, and self, whereas the Christian abolish- 
ed the distinction between soul and person, species 
and individual, and therefore placed immediately in 
self what belongs only to the totality of the species. 
But the immediate unity of the species and indivi- 
duality, is the highest principle, the God of Christi- 
anity, — in it the individual has the significance of the 
absolute being, — and the necessary, immanant conse- 
quence of this principle is personal immortality. 

Or rather : the belief in personal immortality is 
perfectly identical with the belief in a personal God ; 
— i. c., that which expresses the belief in the heavenly, 
immortal life of the person, expresses God also, as he 
is an object to Christians, namely, as absolute, unli- 
mited personality. Unlimited personality is God; but 
heavenly personality, or the perpetuation of human 



THE CHKISTIAN HEAVEN. 225 

personality in heaven, is nothing else than personality 
released from all earthly encumbrances and limit- 
ations ; the only distinction is, that God is heaven 
spiritualized, while heaven is God materialized, or 
reduced to the forms of the senses : that what in God 
is posited only in abstracto is in heaven more an object 
of the imagination. God is the implicit heaven ; hea- 
ven is the explicit God. In the present, God is the 
kingdom of heaven ; in the future, heaven is God. 
God is the pledge, the as yet abstract presence and 
existence of heaven; the anticipation, the epitome of 
heaven. Our own future existence, which, while we 
are in this world, in this body, is a separate, objec- 
tive existence, — is God : God is the idea of the spe- 
cies, which will be first realized, individualized in the 
other world. God is the heavenly, pure, free essence, 
which exists there as heavenly pure beings, the bliss 
which there unfolds itself in a plenitude of blissful 
individuals. Thus God is nothing else than the idea 
or the essence of the absolute, blessed, heavenly life, 
here comprised in an ideal personality. This is 
clearly enough expressed in the belief that the blessed 
life is unity with God. Here we are distinguished 
and separated from God, there the partition falls ; 
here we are men, there gods ; here the Godhead is a 
monopoly, there it is a common possession ; here it is 
an abstract unity, there a concrete multiplicity.* 

The only difficulty in the recognition of this is 
created by the imagination, which, on the one hand 

* u Bene dicitur, quod tunc plene videbimus eum sicuti est, cum 
similes ei erimus, h. e. erimus quod ipse est. Quibus enim potestas data 
est filios Dei fieri, data est potestas, non quidem ut sint Deus, sed sint 
tamen quod Deus est* sint sancti, futuri plene beati, quod Deus est. 
Nee aliunde hie sancti, nee ibi futuri beati, quam ex Deo qui eorum et 
sanctitas et beatitudo est." — De Vita solitaria (among the spurious writ- 
ings of St. Bernard). " Finis autem bona? voluntatis beatitudo est : vita 
aeterna ipse Deus." — Augustin. (ap. Petrus Lomb. 1. ii. dist. 38, c. 1). 
" The other man will be renovated in the spiritual life, i. e., will become 
a spiritual man, when he shaU be restored into the image of God. For 
he will be like God, in God, in life, in righteousness, glory, and wisdom." 
—Luther (T. i. p. 324). 

k3 



226 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

by the conception of the personality of God, on the 
other By the conception of the many personalities 
which it places in a realm ordinarily depicted in the 
hues of the senses, hides the real unity of the idea. 
But in truth there is no distinction between the abso- 
lute life which is conceived as God and the abso- 
lute life which is conceived as heaven, save that in 
heaven we have stretched into length and breadth 
what in God is concentrated in one point. The belief 
in the immortality of man is the belief in the divinity 
of man, and the belief in God is the belief in pure per- 
sonality, released from all limits, and consequently eo 
ipso immortal. The distinctions made between the 
immortal soul and God are either sophistical or ima- 
ginative ; as when, for example, the bliss of the inha- 
bitants of heaven is again circumscribed by limits, and 
distributed into degrees, in order to establish a dis- 
tinction between God and the dwellers in heaven. 

The identity of the divine and heavenly personality 
is apparent even in the popular proofs of immortality. 
If there is not another and a better life, God is not 
just and good. The justice and goodness of God are 
thus made dependent on the perpetuity of indivi- 
duals : but without justice and goodness God is not 
God ; — the Godhead, the existence of God, is there- 
fore made dependent on the existence of individuals. 
If I am not immortal, I believe in no God ; he who 
denies immortality, denies God. But that is impossi- 
ble to me : as surely as there is a God, so surely is 
there an immortality. God is the certainty of my 
future felicity. The interest I have in knowing that 
God w, is one with the interest I have in knowing that 
lam, that i am immortal. God is my hidden, my 
assured existence ; hois the subjectivity of subjects, 
the personality of persons. How then should that not 
belong to persona which belongs to personality? In 
God J make my future into a present, or rather a verb 
into a substantive; how should L separate the one 
from the other? Rod is the existence corresponding 



THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 227 

to my wishes and feelings : lie is the just one, the good, 
who fulfils my wishes. Nature, this world, is an exist- 
ence which contradicts my wishes, my feelings. Here 
it is not as it ought to be ; this world passes away : 
but God is existence as it ought to be. God fulfils my 
wishes ; — this is only a popular personification of the 
position : God is the fulfiller, L e., the reality, the 
fulfilment of my wishes.* But heaven is the exist- 
ence adequate to my wishes, my longing ;f thus, there 
is no distinction between God and heaven. God is 
the power by which man realizes his eternal happi- 
ness ; God is the absolute personality in which all in- 
dividual persons have the certainty of their blessed- 
ness and immortality ; God is to subjectivity the 
highest, last certainty of its absolute truth and essen- 
tiality. 

The doctrine of immortality is the final doctrine of 
religion ; its testament, in which it declares its last 
wishes. Here therefore it speaks out undisguisedly 
what it has hitherto suppressed. If elsewhere the re- 
ligious soul concerns itself with the existence of ano- 
ther being, here it openly considers only its own exist- 
ence ; if elsewhere in religion man makes his existence 
dependent on the existence of God, he here makes the 
reality of God dependent on his own reality; and thus 
what elsewhere is a primitive immediate, truth to him, 
is here a derivative, secondary truth : if I am not im- 
mortal, God is not God ; if there is no immortality, 
there is no God ; — a conclusion already drawn by the 
apostle Paul. If we do not rise again, then Christ is 

* "Si "bonum est habere corpus incorruptibile, quare hoc facturum 
Dernn volumus desperare ?" — Augustinus (Opp. Antwerp, 1700. T. v. 
p. 698). 

f " Quare dicitur spiritale corpus, nisi quia ad nutum spiritus serviet? 
Nihil tibi contradicet ex te, nihil in te rebellabit adversus te . . . . 
Ubi yolueris, eris, . . . Credere enim debemus talia corpora nos 
habituros. ut ubi velimus, quando voluerimus, ibi simus." — Augmtinus 
(1. c. p. 703, 705). " Nihil indecorum ibi erit, sunima pax erit, nihil 
discordans, nihil monstruosum, nihil quod offendat adspectum." (1. c. 
707). " Nisi beatus, non vivat ut vult." (De Civ. Dei, 1. 14, e. 25). 



228 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

not risen, and all is vain. Let us eat and drink. It 
is certainly possible to do * away with what is appa- 
rently or really objectionable in the popular argument- 
ation, by avoiding the inferential form ; but this can 
only be done by making immortality an analytic in- 
stead of a synthetic truth, so as to show that the very 
idea of God as absolute personality or subjectivity, is 
per se the idea of immortality. God is the guarantee 
of my future existence, because he is already the cer- 
tainty and reality of my present existence, my salva- 
tion, my trust, my shield from the forces of the exter- 
nal world ; hence I need not expressly deduce immor- 
tality, or prove it as a separate truth, for I have God, 
I have immortality also. Thus it was with the more 
profound Christian mystics ; to them the idea of im- 
mortality was involved in the idea of God ; God was 
their immortal life, — God himself their subjective 
blessedness : he was for them, for their consciousness, 
what he is in himself, that is, in the essence of religion. 
Thus it is shown that God is heaven : that the two 
are identical. It would have been easier to prove 
the converse, namely, that heaven is the true God of 
men. As man conceives his heaven, so he conceives 
his God ; the content of his idea of heaven is the con- 
tent of his idea of God, only that what in God is a mere 
sketch, a concept, is in heaven depicted and developed 
in the colours and forms of the senses. Heaven is 
therefore the key to the deepest mysteries of religion. 
As heaven is objectively the displayed nature of God, 
so subjectively it is the most candid declaration of the 
inmost thoughts and dispositions of religion. For 
this reason, religions are as various as arc the king- 
doms of heaven, and there are as many different king- 
doms of heaven, as there are characteristic differences 
among men. The Christians themselves have very 
heterogeneous conceptions of heaven,* 

* And their conception^ of God an-jn-t as heft< The pious 

Germans have ft" German God," the pons Spaniards a Spanish God, 
the French a French God. The French actually have the proverb: 



THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 229 

The more judicious among them, however, think and 
say nothing definite about heaven or the future world 
in general, on the ground that it is inconceivable, that 
it can only be thought of by us according to the stand- 
ard of this world, a standard not applicable to the 
the other. All conceptions of heaven here below are, 
they allege, mere images, whereby man represents to 
himself that future, the nature of which is unknown to 
him, but the existence of which is certain. It is just 
£0 with God. The existence of God, it is said, is cer- 
tain ; but what he is, or how he exists, is inscrutable. 
But he who speaks thus, has already driven the future 
world out of his head ; he still holds it fast, either be- 
cause he does not think at all about such matters, or 
because it is still a want of his heart ; but, preoccu- 
pied with real things, he thrusts it as far as possible 
out of his sight ; he denies with his head what he 
affirms with his heart ; for it is to deny the future 
life, to deprive it of the qualities, by which alone 
it is a real and effective object for man. Quality 
is not distinct from existence ; quality is nothing 
but real existence. Existence without quality is a 
chimera, a spectre. Existence is first made known 
to me by quality ; not existence first, and after that, 
quality. The doctrines that God is not to be known 
or defined, and that the nature of the future life is 
inscrutable, are therefore not originally religious 
doctrines : on the contrary, they are the products of 
irreligion while still in bondage to religion, or 
rather hiding itself behind religion ; and they are so, 
for this reason, that originally the existence of God 
is posited only with a definite conception of God 
the existence of a future life only with a definite 
conception of that life. Thus to the Christian, only 
his own paradise, the paradise which has Christian 
qualities, is a certainty, not the paradise of the 

l * Le hon JDieu est Francais" In fact polytheism must exist so long as 
there are various nations. The real God of a people is 'the point dhon- 
neur of its nationality. 



230 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Mahometan or the Elysium of the Greeks. The pri- 
mary certainty is everywhere quality; existence fol- 
lows of course, when one quality is certain. In the 
New Testament we find no proofs, or general propo- 
sitions such as : there is a God, there is a heavenly 
life ; we find only qualities of the heavenly life addu- 
ced ; — " in heaven they marry not." Naturally ; — it 
may be answered, — because the existence of God and 
of heaven is presupposed. But here reflection intro- 
duces a distinction of which the religious sentiment 
knows nothing. Doubtless the existence is presup- 
posed, but only because the quality is itself existence, 
because the inviolate religious feeling lives only in the 
quality, just as to the natural man, the real existence, 
the thing in itself, lies only in the quality which he per- 
ceives. Thus in the passage above cited from the New 
Testament, the virgin or rather sexless life is presup- 
posed as the true life, which, however, necessarily be- 
comes a future one, because the actual life contradicts 
the ideal of the true life. But the certainty of this 
future life lies only in the certainty of its qualities as 
those of the true, highest life, adequate to the ideal. 

Where the future life is really believed in, where it 
is a certain life, there, precisely because it is certain, 
it is also definite. If I know not now what and 
how I shall be ; if there is an essential, absolute differ- 
ence between my future and my present ; neither shall 
I then know what and how I was before, the unity of 
consciousness is at an end, personal identity is abo- 
lished, another being will appear in my place; and 
thus my future existence is not in fact distinguished 
from non-existence. If, on the other hand, there is no 
essential difference, the future is to me an object that 
may be defined and known. And so it is in reality. 
J am the abiding subject under changing conditions; 
I am the v substance which connects the present and the 
future into a unity. How then can the future be 
obscure to me? ( >o the contrary, the life of this world 
ia the dark, incomprehensible life, which only becomes 



THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 231 

clear through the future life ; here I am in disguise ; 
there the mask will fall; there I shall be as I am in truth. 
Hence the position that there indeed is another, a 
heavenly life, but that what and how it is must here 
remain inscrutable, is only an invention of religious 
scepticism which, being entirely alien to the religious 
sentiment, proceeds upon a total misconception of reli- 
gion. That which irreligious-religious reflection con- 
verts into a known image of an unknown yet certain 
thing, is originally, in the primitive, true sense of 
religion, not an image, but the thing itself. Unbe- 
lief, in the garb of belief, doubts the existence of 
the thing, but it is too shallow or cowardly directly 
to call it in question; it only expresses doubt pi the 
image or conception, L e., declares the image to be 
only an image. But the untruth and hollowness of 
this scepticism has been already made evident histo- 
rically. Where it is once doubted that the images of 
immortality are real, that it is possible to exist as faith 
conceives, for example, without a material, real body, 
and without difference of sex ; there the future exist- 
ence in general, is soon a matter of doubt. With the 
image falls the thing, simply because the image is 
the thing itself. 

The belief in heaven, or in a future life in general, 
rests on a mental judgment. It expresses praise and 
blame ; it selects a wreath from the Flora of this world, 
— and this critical florilegium is heaven. That which 
man thinks beautiful, good, agreeable, is for him what 
alone ought to be ; that which he thinks, bad, odious, 
disagreeable, is what ought not to be, and hence, since 
it nevertheless exists, it is condemned to destruction, 
it is regarded as a negation. Where life is not in 
contradiction with a feeling, an imagination, an idea, 
and where this feeling, this idea, is not held authori- 
tative and absolute, the belief in another and a hea- 
venly life does not arise. The future life is nothing 
else than life in unison with the feeling, with the idea, 
which the present life contradicts. The whole import 



232 THE ESSENCE OP CHRISTIANITY. 

of the future life is the abolition of this discordance, 
and the realization of a state which corresponds to 
the feelings, in which man is in unison with himself. 
An unknown, unimagined future is a ridiculous chi- 
mera : the other world is nothing more than the rea- 
lity of a known idea, the satisfaction of a conscious 
desire, the fulfilment of a wish ;* it is only the remo- 
val of limits which here oppose themselves to the real- 
ization of the idea. Where would be the consolation, 
where the significance of a future life, if it were mid- 
night darkness to me? No ! from yonder world there 
streams upon me with the splendour of virgin gold, 
what here shines only with the dimness of unrefined 
ore. The future world has no other significance, no 
other basis of its existence, than the separation of the 
metal from the admixture of foreign elements, the se- 
paration of the good from the bad, of the pleasant 
from the unpleasant, of the praiseworthy from the 
blamable. The future world is the bridal in which 
man concludes his union with his beloved. Long has 
he loved his bride, long has he yearned after her : but 
external relations, hard reality, have stood in the way 
of his union to her. When the wedding takes place, 
his beloved one does not become a different being; else 
how could he so ardently long for her? She only be- 
comes his own ; from an object of yearning and affec- 
tionate desire she becomes an object of actual posses- 
sion. It is true that here below, the other world is 
only an image, a conception ; still it is not the image 
of a remote, unknown thing, but a portrait of that 
which man love.- and prefers before all else. What 
man loves is hie soul. The heathens enclosed the ashes 
of the beloved dead in an urn; with the Christian the 
heavenly future is the mausoleum in which he enshrines 
his Soul. 

* " Ibi DOfltni 8] ." — Angoatin.. "Therefore we have the 

first fruits of immortal life in hope, until perfection cornea at the last 
day, wherein ire shall see and feel the life vra have believed in and hoped 
for." — Luther (Th. i. I 469). 



THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 233 

In order to comprehend a particular faith, or reli- 
gion in general, it is necessary to consider religion in 
its rudimentary stages in its lowest, rudest condition. 
Religion must not only be traced in an ascending line, 
but surveyed in the entire course of its existence. It is 
requisite to regard the various earlier religions as pre- 
sent in the absolute religion, and not as left behind it 
in the past, in order correctly to appreciate and com- 
prehend the absolute religion as well as the others. 
The most frightful " aberrations, 77 the wildest excesses 
of the religious consciousness, often afford the pro- 
foundest insight into the mysteries of the absolute reli- 
gion. Ideas seemingly the rudest are often only the 
most child-like, innocent and true. This observation 
applies to the conceptions of a future life. The 
" savage/ 7 whose consciousness does not extend beyond 
his own country, whose entire being is a growth of its 
soil, takes his country with him into the other world, 
either leaving Nature as it is, or improving it, and so 
overcoming in the idea of the other life the difficulties 
he experiences in this.* In this limitation of unculti- 
vated tribes there is a striking trait. With them the 
future expresses nothing else than home-sickness. 
Death separates man from his kindred, from his people, 
from his country. But the man who has not extended 
his consciousness, cannot endure this separation ; he 
must come back again to his native land. The negroes 
in the West Indies killed themselves that they might 
come to life again in their father-land. And accord- 
ing to Ossian 7 s conception " the spirit of those who 
die in a strange land float back towards their birth- 
place. 7 ^ The limitation is the direct opposite of ima- 

* According to old books of travel, however, there are many tribes 
■which do not believe that the future is identical with the present, or 
that is is better, but that it is even worse. Parny (Euv. chois T. i. Me- 
lang.) tells of a dying negro-slave, who refused the inauguration to im- 
mortality by baptism, in these words: "Je ne veux point d'une autre 
vie, car peut-etre y serais-je encore votre esclave.' 

| Ahlwardt (Ossian Anm zu Carthonn.) 



234 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

ginative spiritualism, which makes man a vagabond, 
who, indifferent even to the earth, roams from star to 
star ; and certainly there lies a real truth at its foun- 
dation, ilan is what he is through Nature, however 
much may belong to his spontaneity ; for even his 
spontaneity has its foundation in Nature, of which his 
particular character is only an expression. Be thank- 
ful to Nature! Man cannot be separated from it. 
The German whose God is spontaneity, owes his char- 
acter to Nature just as much as the oriental. To find 
fault with Indian art. with Indian religion and philos- 
ophy, is to find fault with Indian Nature. You com- 
plain of the reviewer who tears a passage in your 
works from the context that he may hand it over to 
ridicule. Why are you yourself guilty of that which 
you blame in others? Why do you tear the Indian 
religion from its connexion, in which it is just as rea- 
sonable as your absolute religion ? 

Faith in a, future world, in a life after death, is 
therefore with " savage " tribes essentially nothing 
more than direct faith in the present life — immediate 
unbroken faitli in this life. For them, their actual 
life, even with its local limitations, has all, has abso- 
lute value ; they cannot abstract from it, they cannot 
conceive its being broken off ; L e., they believe direct- 
ly in the infinitude, the perpetuity of this life. Only 
when the belief in immortality becomes a critical be- 
lief, when a distinction is made between what is to be 
left behind here, and what is in reserve there, between 
what here passes away, and what there is to abide, 
does the belief in life after death form itself into the 
belief in another life ; but this criticism, this distinc- 
tion, is applied to the present life also. Thus the 
Christians distinguish between the natural and the 
Christian life, the sensual or worldly and the spiritual 
or holy life. The heavenly life is no other than that 
which is. already here below, distinguished from the 
merely natural life, though still tainted with it. That 
which the Christian excludes from himself now — for 



THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 235 

example, the sexual life — is excluded from the future : 
the only distinction is, that he is there free from that 
which he here wishes to be free from, and seeks to 
rid himself of by the will, by devotion, and by bodily 
mortification. Hence this life is, for the Christian, a 
life of torment and pain, because he is here still beset 
by a hostile power, and has to struggle with the lusts 
of the flesh and the assaults of the devil. 

The faith of cultured nations is therefore distin- 
guished from that of the uncultured in the same way 
that culture in general is distinguished from inculture ; 
namely, that the faith of culture is a discriminating, 
critical, abstract faith. A distinction implies a judg- 
ment ; but where there is a judgment there arises the 
distinction between positive and negative. The faith 
of savage tribes is a faith without a judgment. Cul- 
ture, on the contrary, judges : to the cultured man 
only cultured life is the true life ; to the Christian 
only the Christian life. The rude child of Nature 
steps into the other life just as he is, without cere- 
mony : the other world is his natural nakedness. The 
cultivated man, on the contrary, objects to the idea of 
such an unbridled life after death, because even here 
he objects to the unrestricted life of nature. Faith in 
a future life is therefore only faith in the true life of 
the present ; the essential elements of this life are also 
the essential elements of the other : accordingly, faith 
in a future life is not faith in another unknown life ; 
but in the truth and infinitude, and consequently in 
the perpetuity, of that life which already here below 
is regarded as the authentic life. 

As God is nothing else than the nature of man 
purified from that which to the human individual ap- 
pears, whether in feeling or thought, a limitation, an 
evil ; so the future life is nothing else than the pre- 
sent life, freed from that which appears a limitation 
or an evil. The more definitely and profoundly the 
individual is conscious of the limit as a limit, of the 
evil as an evil, the more definite and profound is his 



236 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

conviction of the future life, where these limits disap- 
pear. The future life is the feeling, the conception of 
freedom from those limits which here circumscribe the 
feeling of self, the existence of the individual. The 
only difference between the course of religion and that 
of the natural or rational man is, that the end which 
the latter arrives at by a straight line, the former only 
attains by describing a curved line — a circle. The 
natural man remains at home because he finds it agree- 
able, because he is perfectly satisfied ; religion which 
commences with a discontent, a disunion, forsakes its 
home and travels far, but only to feel the more vividly 
in the distance the happiness of home. In religion 
man separates himself from himself, but only to return 
always to the same point from which he sets out. Man 
negatives himself, but only to posit himself again, and 
that in a glorified form : he negatives this life, but only, 
in the end, to posit it again in the future life.* The 
future life is this life once lost, but found again, and 
radient with all the more brightness for the joy of re- 
covery. The religious man renounces the joys of this 
world, but only that he may win in return the joys of 
heaven ; or rather he renounces them because he is 
already in the ideal possession of heavenly joys ; and 
the joys of heaven are the same as those of earth, only 
that they are freed from the limits and contrarieties of 
this life. Religion thus arrives, though by a circuit, at 
the very goal, the goal of joy, towards which the natural 
man hastens in a direct line. To live in images or sym- 
bols, is the essence of religion. Religion sacrifices the 
thing itself to the image. The future life is the pre- 
sent in the mirror of the imagination : the enraptur- 
ing image is in the sense of religion the true type of 
earthly life, — real life only a glimmer of that ideal, 

* There everything will be restored. " Qui modo vivit, erit, nee me 
tte, vcl ODgue fraudatum revomet patefacti fossa sepulchri." — 
Aurelins Prod. (Apotheos, <i.- l!r-nrr. Carols hum). And this faith, 
which you consider pidfi and carnal, and which you therefore disavow, 
is the only consistent, li ►nest, and true faith. To the identity of tho 
person belongs the identity of the body. 



THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 237 

imaginary life. The future life is the present embel- 
lished, contemplated through the imagination, purified 
from all gross matter ; or, positively expressed, it is 
the beauteous present intensified. 

Embellishment, emendation, presupposes blame, dis- 
satisfaction. But the dissatisfaction is only superficial. 
I do not deny the thing to be of value ; just as it is, 
however, it does not please me ; I deny only the modi- 
fication, not the substance, otherwise I should urge 
annihilation. A house which absolutely displeases me 
I cause to be pulled down, not to be embellished. To 
the believer in a future life joy is agreeable — who 
can fail to be conscious that joy is something posi- 
tive ? — but it is disagreeable to him, that here joy is 
followed by opposite sensations, that it is transitory. 
Hence he places joy in the future life also, but as eter- 
nal, uninterrupted, divine joy, (and the future life is 
therefore called the world of joy,) such as he here 
conceives it in God ; for God is nothing but eternal, 
uninterrupted joy, posited as a subject. Individuality 
or personality is agreeable to him, but only as unen- 
cumbered by objective forces ; hence, be includes in- 
dividuality also, but pure, absolutely subjective indi- 
viduality. Light pleases him ; but not gravitation, 
because this appears a limitation of the individual ; 
not night, because in it man is subjected to Nature : 
in the other world, there is light, but no weight, no 
night, — pure, unobstructed light.* 

As man in his utmost remoteness from himself, in 
God, always returns upon himself, always revolves 
round himself ; so in his utmost remoteness from the 
world, he always at last comes back to it. The more 
extra-and suprahuman God appears at the commence- 
ment, the more human does he show himself to be in 
the subsequent course of things, or at the close : and 
just so, the more supernatural the heavenly life looks 

* " Noque enim post resurrectionem tempus diebus ac noctibus nume- 
rabitur. Erit magis una dies sine vespere." — Joh. Damascen. (Orth. 
Fidei 1. ii. c. 1) 



238 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

in the beginning or at a distance, the more clearly does 
it, in the end, or when viewed closely, exhibit its identity 
with the natural life,— an identity which at last extends 
even to the flesh, even to the body. In the first in- 
stance the mind is occupied with the separation of the 
soul from the body, as in the conception of God the 
mind is first occupied with the separation of the 
essence from the individual ; — the individual dies a 
spiritual death, the dead body which remains behind 
is the human individual ; the soul which has departed 
from it is God. But the separation of the soul from 
the body, of the essence from the individiual, of God 
from man, must be abolished again. Every separa- 
tion of beings essentially allied is painful. The soul 
yearns after its lost half, after its body ; as God, the 
departed soul, yearns after the real man. As, there- 
fore, God becomes a man again, so the soul returns to 
its body, and the perfect identity of this world and 
the other if now restored. It is true that this new 
body is a bright, glorified, miraculous body, but — and 
this is the main point — it is another and yet the same 
body,* as God is another being than man, and yet the 
same. Here we come again to the idea of miracle, 
which unites contradictories. The supernatual body 
is a body constructed by the imagination, for which 
very reason it is adequate to the feelings of man ; an 
unburdensome, purely subjective body. Faith in the 
future life is nothing else than faitli in the truth of 
the imagination, as faith in God is faith in the truth 
and infinity of human feeling. Or: as faith in God is 
only faith in the abstract nature of man, so faitli in 
the heavenly life is only faith in the abstract earthly 
life. 

But the Bum of the future life is happiness, the ever- 
lasting bliss of personality, which is here limited and 
circumscribed by Nature. Faith in the future life is 
therefore faith in the freedom of subjectivity from the 

* " Ipsum (oorpus) eril et turn ipsuza erit." — Augustinus (v. J. Ch. 
Doederlein fast TheoL Christ AWf, 1781, § 280). 



THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 239 

limits of nature ; it is faith in the eternity and infini- 
tude of personality, and not of personality viewed in 
relation to the idea of the species, in which it for 
ever unfolds itself in new individuals, but of person- 
ality as belonging to already existing individuals : 
consequently, it is the faith of man in himself. But 
faith in the kingdom of heaven is one with faith in 
God— the content of both ideas is the same ; God is 
pure absolute subjectivity released from all natural 
limits ; he is what individuals ought to be and will 
be : faith in God is therefore the faith of man in the 
infinitude and truth of his own nature ; the divine 
being is the subjective human being in his absolute 
freedom and unlimitedness. 

Our most essential task is now fulfilled. We have 
reduced the supermundane, supernatural, and super- 
human nature of God to the elements of human nature 
as its fundamental elements. Our process of analysis 
has brought us again to the position with which we 
set out. The beginning, middle and end of Religion 
is Man. 



END OF PART I. 



240 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 



PAKT II. 

THE FALSE OR THEOLOGICAL ESSENCE OF 
RELIGION. 



CHAPTER XIX. 
THE ESSENTIAL STAND-POINT OF RELIGION. 

The essential stand-point of religion is the practical 
or subjective. The end of religion is the welfare, the 
salvation, the ultimate felicity of man ; the relation of 
man to God is nothing else than his relation to his 
own spiritual good ; God is the realized salvation of 
the soul, or the unlimited power of effecting the sal- 
vation, the bliss of man.* The Christian religion is 
especially distinguished from other religions in this, 
— that no other has given equal prominence to the sal- 
vation of man. But this salvation is not temporal, 
earthly prosperity and well-being. On the contrary, 
the most genuine Christians have declared that earthly 
good draws man away from God, whereas adversity, 
suffering, afflictions lead him back to God. and hence 
are alone suited to Christians. Why ? because in 
trouble man is only practically or subjectively dis- 
posed ; in trouble he has recourse only to the one 
tiling needful ; in trouble God is felt to be a want of 
man. Pleasure, joy, expands man ; trouble, suffering, 

■ 

* " Prater salutem tuam nihil cogites ; solum quae Dei sunt cures." 
— Thomas A K. (de Imit 1. i. & 23). " Contra salutem proprium cogi- 
tes nihil. Minus dixi : rontra, pra-ter dixisse dohupram." — Bernhardus 
(dfl Conoid, ad Eugenium pontif. max. 1. ii.). " Qui Deum quaerit, de 
propria salute sollicitus est." — Clemens Alex. (Cohort, ad Gent.). 



THE ESSENTIAL STAND-POINT OP RELIGION, 241 

contracts and concentrates him ; — in suffering man 
denies the reality of the world ; the things that charm 
the imagination of the artist and the intellect of the 
thinker lose their attraction for him, their power over 
him ; he is absorbed in himself, in his own soul. The 
soul thus self-absorbed, self-concentrated, seeking satis- 
faction in itself alone, denying the world, idealistic in 
relation to the world, to Nature in general, but real- 
istic in relation to man, caring only for its inherent 
need of salvation, — this soul is God. God, as the 
object of religion, — and only as such is he God, — God 
in the sense of a iwmen propriam, not of a vague, met- 
aphysical entity, is essentially an object only of reli- 
gion, not of philosophy, — of feeling, not of the intellect, 
— of the heart's necessity, not of the mind's freedom ; 
in short, an object which is the reflex not of the theo- 
retical but of the practical tendency in man. 

Religion annexes to its doctrines a curse and a 
blessing, damnation and salvation. Blessed is he that 
believeth, cursed is he that believeth not. Thus it ap- 
peals not to reason, but to feeling, to the desire of 
happiness, to the passions of hope and fear. It does 
not take the theoretic point of view ; otherwise it 
must have been free to enunciate its doctrines without 
attaching to them practical consequences, without to 
a certain extent compelling belief in them ; for when 
the case stands thus : I am lost if I do not believe, — the 
conscience is under a subtle kind of constraint ; the fear 
of hell urges me to believe. Even supposing my belief 
to be in its origin free, fear inevitably intermingles 
itself ; my conscience is always under constraint ; doubt, 
the principle of theoretic freedom, appears to me a 
crime. And as in religion the highest idea, the highest 
existence is God, so the highest crime is doubt in God, 
or the doubt that God exists. But that which I do 
not trust myself to doubt, which I cannot doubt with- 
out feeling disturbed in my soul, without incurring 
guilt ; that is no matter of theory, but a matter of 
conscience, no Being of the intellect, but of the heart, 

L 



242 •* THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Now as the sole stand-point of religion is the prac- 
tical or subjective stand-point, as therefore to religion 
the whole, the essential man is that part of his nature 
which is practical, which forms resolutions, which acts 
in accordance with conscious aims, whether physical 
or moral, and which considers the world not in itself, 
but only in relation to those aims or wants : the con- 
sequence is that everything which lies behind the 
practical consciousness, but which is the essential ob- 
ject of theory — theory in its most original and general 
sense, namely, that of objective contemplation and ex- 
perience, of the intellect, of science * — is regarded by 
religion as lying outside man and Xature, in a special, 
personal being. All good, but especially such as takes 
possession of man apart from his volition, such as does 
not correspond with any resolution or purpose, such 
as transcends the limits of the practical consciousness, 
comes from God ; all wickedness, evil, but especially 
such as overtakes him against his will in the midst of 
his best moral resolutions, or hurries him along with 
terrible violence, comes from the devil. The scientific 
knowledge of the essence of religion includes the 
knowledge of the devil, of Satan, of demons.t These 
things cannot be omitted without a violent mutilation 
of religion. Grace and its works are the antitheses 
of the devil and his works. As the involuntary, 
sensual impulses which flesh out from the depths of the 
nature, and, in general, all those phenomena of moral 
and physical evil which are inexplicable to religion, 
appear to it as the work of the Evil Being ; so the 

* Here and in other parts of this work, theory is taken in the sense in 
which it is the source of true objective activity, — the science which gives 
birth to art, — for man can do only so much as he knows : " tantum po- 
test quantum scit." 



■ !icepti<»: 



f Concerning the biblical conceptions of Satan, his power and works, 
see Lutzelberger's ki (irundzuge dcr Paulinixhcn (ilaubenslehre," and G. 
Ch. Knapp's M York-*, iib.-r d. ChristL (ilaubensl." § G2 — Go. To this 
subject belongs demoniacal possession, which also has its attestation in 
the Bible. See Knapp (§ 66. hi. 2, 3). 



THE ESSENTIAL STAtfD-POIXT OP RELIGION. 243 

involuutary movements of inspiration and ecstacy ap- 
pear to it as the work of the Good Being, God, of the 
Holy Spirit or of Grace. Hence the arbitrariness of 
grace — the complaint of the pious that grace at one 
time visits and blesses them, at another forsakes and 
rejects them. The life, the agency of grace, is the life, 
the agency of emotion. Emotion is the Paraclete of 
Christians. The moments which are forsaken by 
divine grace, are the moments destitute of emotion and 
inspiration. 

In relation to the inner life, Grace may be denned 
as religious genius; in relation to the outer life as reli- 
gious chance. Man is good or wicked by no means 
through himself, his own power, his will ; but through 
that complete synthesis of hidden and evident deter- 
minations of things which, because they rest on no 
evident necessity, we ascribe to the power of " chance." 
Divine grace is the power of chance beclouded with 
additional mystery. Here we have again the confir- 
mation of that which we have seen to be the essential 
law of religion. Religion denies, repudiates chance, 
making everything dependent on God, explaining 
everything by means of him ; but this denial is only 
apparent; it merely gives chance the name of the 
divine sovereignty. For the divine will which, on 
incomprehensible grounds, for incomprehensible rea- 
sons, that is, speaking plainly, out of groundless, abso- 
lute arbitrariness, out of divine caprice, as it were, 
determines or predestines some to evil and misery, 
others to good and happiness, has not a single positive 
characteristic to distinguish it from the power of 
chance. The mystery of the election of grace is thus 
the mystery of chance. I say the mystery of chance ; 
for in reality chance is aggrystery, although slurred 
over and ignored by our speculative religious philo- 
sophy, which, as in its occupation with the illusory 
mysteries of the Absolute Being, i. e., of theology, it 
has overlooked the true mysteries of thought and life, 
so also in the mystery of divine grace or freedom of 

l2 



244 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

election, has forgotten the profane mystery of chance.* 
But to return. The devil is the negative, the evil, 
that springs from the nature, but not from the will ; 
God is the positive, the good, which comes from the 
nature, but not from the conscious action of the will ; 
the devil is involuntary, inexplicable wickedness ; God 
involuntary, inexplicable goodness. The source of 
both is the same, the quality only is different or oppo- 
site. For this reason, the belief in a devil was, until 
the most recent times, intimately connected with the 
belief in God, so that the denial of the devil was held 
to be virtually as atheistic as the denial of God. Nor 
without reason ; for when men once begin to derive 
the phenomena of evil from natural causes, they at the 
same time begin to derive the phenomena of good, of 
the divine, from the nature of things, and come at 
length either to abolish the idea of God altogether, or 
at least to believe in another God than the God of 
religion. In this case it most commonly happens that 
they make the Deity an idle inactive being, whose ex- 
istence is equivalent to non-existence, since he no 
longer actively interposes in life, but is merely placed 
at the summit of things, at the beginning of the world, 
as the First Cau^e. Go.d created the world : this is 
all that is here retained* of God. The past tense is 
necessary ; for since that epoch the world pursues its 
course like a machine. The addition : He still creates, 
he is creating at this moment, is only the result of ex- 
ternal reflection ; the past tense adequately expresses 
the religious idea in this stage ; for the spirit of reli- 
gion is gone when the operation of God is reduced to 
a fecit or creavit. It is otherwise when the genuine 
religious consciousness says : The fecit is still to-day a 
/<i'it. This, though here also it is a product of reflec- 
tion, has nevertheless a legitimate meaning, because 

* Doubtless, this unveiling of the mystery of predestination will be 

pronounced ttrOClOUB, LmpioUB, diaholiral. I have nothing to allege 
• this; I would rather he a devil in alliance with truth, than an 

angel in alliance with falsehood. 



THE ESSENTIAL STAND-POINT OP RELIGION. 245 

by the religious spirit God is really thought of as 
active. 

Religion is abolished where the idea of the world, 
of so-called second causes, intrudes itself between God 
and man. Here a foreign element, the principle of 
intellectual culture, has insinuated itself, peace is 
broken, the harmony of religion, which lies only in the 
immediate connexion of man with God, is destroyed. 
Second causes are a capitulation of the unbelieving 
intellect with the still believing heart. It is true that, 
according to religion also, God works on man by 
means of other things and beings. But God alone is 
the cause, he alone is the active and efficient being. 
What a fellow-creature does, is in the view of religion 
done not by him, but by God. The other is only an 
appearance, a medium, a vehicle, not a cause. But the 
" second cause" is a miserable anomaly, neither an in- 
dependent nor a dependent being f y God, it is true, 
gives the first impulse, but then ensues the spontane- 
ous activity of the second cause.* 

Religion of itself, unadulterated by foreign elements, 
knows nothing of the existence' of second causes ; on 
the contrary, they are a stone of stumbling to it ; for 
the realm of second causes, the sensible world, Nature, 
is precisely what separates mai$ from God, although 
God as a real God, i. e., an external being, is supposed 
himself to become in the other world a sensible exist- 
ence^ Hence religion believes that one day this wall 

* A hindered doctrine is that of the Concursus Dei, according to which, 
God not only gives the first impulse, hut also co-operates in the agency of 
the second cause. For the rest, this doctrine is only a particular form 
of the contradictory dualism "between God and Nature, which runs through 
the history of Christianity. On the subject of this remark, as of the whole 
paragraph, see Strauss : Die Christliche Glaubenslehre, B. ii. § 75, 76. 

f " Dum sumus in hoc corpore,-peregrinamur ah eo qui summe est." — 
Bernard. Epist. 18. (Ed. Basle, 1552.) "As long as we live, we are in 
the midst of death."— Luther (T. i. p. 331.) The idea of the future life 
is therefore nothing else than the idea of true, perfected religion, freed 
from the limits and obstructions of this life, — the future life, as has been 
already said, nothing but the true opinion and disposition, the open heart, 



246 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of separation will fall away. One day there will be 
no Nature, no matter, no body, at least none such as 
to separate man from God : then there will be only 
God and the pious soul. Religion derives the idea of 
the existence of second causes, that is, of things which 
are interposed between God and man, only from the 
physical, natural, and hence the irreligious or at least 
non-religious theory of the universe : a theory which 
it nevertheless immediately subverts by making the 
operations of Nature operations of God. But this re- 
ligious idea is in contradiction with the natural sense 
and understanding, which concedes a real, spontaneous 
activity to natural things. And this contradiction of 
the physical view with the religious theory, religion 
resolves by converting the undeniable activity of things 
into an activity of God. Thus, on this view, the posi- 
tive idea is God ; the negative, the world. 

On the contrary, where second causes, having been 
set in motion, are, 1 so to speak, emancipated, the con- 
verse occurs ; Nature is the positive, God a negative 
idea. The world is independent in its existence, its 
persistence ; only as to its commencement is it depen- 
dent. God is here only a hypothetical Being, an in- 
ference, arising from the necessity of a limited under- 
standing, to which the existence of a world viewed by 
it as a machine, is inexplicable without a self-moving 
principle ; — he is no longer an original, absolutely nec- 
essary Being. God exists not for his own sake, but for 
the sake of the world, — merely that he may, as a First 
Cause, explain the existence of the world. The narrow 

of religion. Here we believe; there we behold; i. e., there there is no- 
thing besides God, and thus nothing between God nnd the soul ; but only 
for this reason, that there ought to be nothing between them, because the 
immediate union of God and the soul is the true opinion and desire of 
religion. — " We have as yet so to do with God as with one hidden from 
us, and it is not j>o.s>ible that in this life we should hold communion with 
him fact to face. All creatures are now nothing else than vain masks, 
under which God conceals himself, and by which he deals with u^." — 
Luther (T. xi. \>. 70). "Ifthon Wert only free from the images of created 

things, thou slightest Uave God without intermission.'' — Tanler (I.e. 
p. 313). 



THE ESSENTIAL STAND-POINT OF RELIGION. 247 

rationalizing man takes objection to the original self- 
subsistance of the world, because he looks at it only 
from the subjective, practical point of view, only in its 
commoner aspect, only as a piece of mechanism, not in 
its majesty and glory, not as the Cosmos. He con- 
ceives the world as having been launched into existence 
by an original impetus, as, according to mathematical 
theory, is the case with matter once set in motion and 
thenceforth going on for ever : that is, he postulates a 
mechanical origin. A machine must have a beginning; 
this is involved in its very idea ; for it has not the 
source of motion in itself. 

All religious speculative cosmogony is tautology, as 
is apparent from this example. In cosmogony man 
declares or realizes the idea he has of the world ; he 
merely repeats what he has already said in another 
form. Thus here ; if the world is a machine, it is self- 
evident that it did not make itself, that on the con- 
trary it was created, L e., had a mechanical origin. 
Herein, it is true, the religious consciousness agrees 
with the mechanical theory, that to it also the world 
is a mere fabric, a product of Will. But they agree 
only for an instant, only in the moment of creation ; 
that moment past, the harmony ceases. The holder of 
the mechanical theory needs God only as the creator 
of the world ; once made, the world turns its back on 
the creator, and rejoices in its godless self-subsistence. 
But religion creates the world only to maintain it in 
the perpetual consciousness of its nothingness, its de- 
penence on God.* To the mechanical theorist, the 
creation is the last thin thread which yet ties him to 
religion ; the religion to which the nothingness of the 
world is a present truth, (for all power and activity 
is to it the power and activity of God,) is with him 

* u Voluntate igitur Dei immobilis manet et stat in seculum terra . . . 
et voluntate Dei movetur et nutat. Non ergo fundamentis suis nixa sub- 
sistit, nee fulcris suis stabilis perseverat, sed Dominus statuit earn et firma- 
mento voluntatis suae continet, quia in maim ejus omnes fines terrse." — 
Ambroisus (Hexaemeron. 1. i. c. 61). 



248 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

only a surviving reminiscence of youth ; hence he re- 
moves the creation of the world, the act of religion, 
the non-existence of the world, (for in the beginning, 
before the creation, there was no world, only God,) 
into the far distance, into the past, while the self-sub- 
sistence of the world, which absorbs all his senses and 
endeavours, acts on him with the force of the present. 
The mechanical theorist interrupts and cuts short the 
activity of God by the activity of the world With 
him God has indeed still an historical right, but this 
is in contradiction with the right he awards to Nature ; 
hence he limits as much as possible the right yet re- 
maining to God, in order to gain wider and freer play 
for his natural causes, and thereby for his under- 
standing. 

With this class of thinkers the creation holds the 
same position as miracles, which also they can and 
actually do acquiesce in, because miracles exist, at 
least according to religious opinion. But not to say 
that he explains miracles naturally, that is, mechani- 
cally, he can only digest them when he relegates them 
to the past ; for the present he begs to be excused from 
believing in them, and explains everything to himself 
charmingly on natural principles. When a belief has 
departed from the reason, the intelligence, when it is 
no longer held spontaneously, but merely because it is 
a common belief, or because on some ground or other 
it must be held ; in short, when a belief is inwardly a 
past one ; then externally also the object of the belief 
is referred to the past. Unbelief thus gets breathing 
space, but at the same time concedes to belief at least 
an historical validity. The past is here the fortunate 
means of compromise between belief and unbelief: I 
certainly believe in miracles, but, nota bene, in no mir- 
acles which happen now — only in those which onco 
happened, which, thank God! are already pins quom 
perfecta. So also with the creation. The creation is 
an immediate act of God, a miracle, for there was once 
nothing but God. In the idea of the creation man 



THE ESSENTIAL STAND-POINT OP EELIGION. 249 

transcends the world, he rises into abstraction from it; 
he conceives it as non-existent in the moment of cre- 
ation ; thus he dispels from his sight what stands be- 
tween himself and God, the sensible world ; he places 
himself in immediate contact with God. But the me- 
chanical thinker shrinks from this immediate contact 
with God • hence he at once makes the prcesens, if in- 
deed he soars so high, into a perfectum ; he interposes 
millenniums between his natural or materialistic view 
and the thought of an immediate operation of God. 

To the religious spirit, on the contrary, God alone 
is the cause of all positive effects, God alone the ulti- 
mate and also the sole ground wherewith it answers, 
or rather repels all questions which theory puts for- 
ward ; for the affirmative of religion is virtually a ne- 
gative ; its answer amounts to nothing, since it solves 
the most various questions always with the same an- 
swer, making all the operations of Nature immediate 
operations of God, of a designing, personal, extrana- 
tural or supranatural Being, God is the idea which 
supplies the lack of theory. The idea of God is the 
explanation of the inexplicable, — which explains no- 
thing because it is supposed to explain everything 
without distinction ; he is the night of theory; a night 
however in which everything is clear to religious 
feeling, because in it the measure of darkness, the dis- 
criminating light of the understanding, is extinct ; he 
is the ignorance which solves all doubt by repressing 
it, which knows everything because it knows nothing 
definite, because all things which impress the intellect 
disappear before religion, lose their individuality, in 
the eyes of divine power are nothing. Darkness is the 
mother of religion. 

The essential act of religion, that in which religion 
puts into action what we have designated as its essence, 
is prayer. Prayer is all-powerful. What the pious 
soul entreats for in prayer, God fulfils. But he prays 
not for spiritual gifts alone, which lie in some sort 
in the power of man ; he prays also for things which 

l3 



250 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

lie out of him, which are in the power of Nature, a 
power which it is the very object of prayer* to over- 
come ; in prayer he lays hold on a supernatural means, 
in order to attain ends in themselves natural. God is 
to him not the causa remota but the causa proximo,, the 
immediate, efficient cause of all natural effects. All 
so-called secondary forces and second causes are no- 
thing to him when he prays ; if they were anything to 
him, the might, the fervour of prayer would be anni- 
hilated. But in fact they have no existence for him ; 
otherwise he would assuredly seek to attain his end 
only by some intermediate process. But he desires 
immediate help. He has recourse to prayer in the cer- 
tainty that he can do more, infinitely more, by prayer, 
than by all the efforts of reason and all the agencies 
of nature, — in the conviction that prayer possesses 
superhuman and supernatural powers. t But in prayer 
he applies immediately to God. Thus God is to him 
the immediate cause, the fulfilment of prayer, the power 
which realizes prayer. But an immediate act of God 
is a miracle ; hence miracle is essential to the religious 
view. Religion explains everything miraculously. 
That miracles do not always happen, is indeed obvious, 
as that man does not always pray. But the conside- 
ration that miracles do not always happen, lies outside 
the nature of religion, in the empirical or physical 
mode of view only. Where religion begins, there also 
begins miracle. Every true prayer is a miracle, an 
act of the wonder working power. External miracles 
themselves only make visible internal miracles, that 
is, they are only a manifestation in time and space, 

* It is only unbelief in the eflicacy of prayer which has subtly limited 
prayer to spiritual matters. 



f According to tin* notion of barbarians, therefore, prayer is a coercive 
power, a charm. Hut this conception is an unchristian one (although even 

among many Christians, the idea is accepted that prayer constrains God); 

for in Christianity God U essentially feeling satisfied in itself, Almighty 
goodness, which denies nothing to (religions) feeling. The idea of co- 
ercion presupposes an unfeeling God. 



THE ESSENTIAL STAND-POINT OF RELIGION. 251 

and therefore as a special fact, of what in and by itself 
is a fundamental position of religion, namely, that God 
is, in general, the supernatural, immediate cause of all 
things. The miracle of fact is only an impassioned 
expression of religion, a moment of inspiration. Mir- 
acles happen only in extraordinary crises, in which 
there is an exaltation of the feelings : hence there are 
miracles of anger. No miracle is wrought in cold 
blood. But it is precisely in moments of passion that 
the latent nature reveals itself. Man does not always 
pray with equal warmth and power. Such prayers 
are therefore ineffective. Only ardent prayer reveals 
the nature of prayer. Man truly prays when he re- 
gards prayer as in itself a sacred power, a divine force. 
So it is with miracles. Miracles happen — no matter 
whether few or many — wherever there is, as a basis 
for them, a belief in the miraculous. But the belief 
in miracle is no theoretic or objective mode of viewing 
the world and Nature ; miracle realizes practical wants, 
and that in contradiction with the laws which are im- 
perative to the reason ; in miracle man subjugates Na- 
ture, as in itself a nullity, to his own ends, which he 
regards as a reality ; miracle is the superlative ex- 
pression of spiritual or religious utilitarianism ; in mir- 
acle all things are at the service of necessitous man. 
It is clear from this, that the conception of the world 
which is essential to religion is that of the practical or 
subjective stand-point, that God — for the miracle-work- 
ing power is identical with God — is a purely practical 
or subjective being, serving however as a substitute 
for a theoretic view, and is thus no object of thought, 
of the knowing faculty, and more than miracle, which 
owes its origin to the negation of thought. If I place 
myself in the point of view of thought, of investigation, 
of theory, in which I consider things in themselves, in 
their mutual relations, the miracle-working being van- 
ishes into nothing, miracle disappears ; L e., the re- 
ligious miracle, which is absolutely different from the 
natural miracle, though they are continually inter- 



252 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

changed, in order to stultify reason, and, under the ap- 
pearance of natural science, to introduce religious mir- 
acle into the sphere of rationality and reality. 

But for this very reason — namely, that religion is 
removed from the stand-point, from the nature of the- 
ory — the true, universal essence of Nature and human- 
ity, which as such is hidden from religion and is only 
visible to the theoretic eye, is conceived as another, a 
miraculous and supernatural essence ; the idea of the 
species becomes the idea of God, who again is himself 
an individual being, but is distinguished from human 
individuals in this, that he possesses their qualities 
according to the measure of the species. Hence, in 
religion man necessarily places his nature out of him- 
self, regards his nature as a separate nature ; — neces- 
sarily, because the nature which is the object of theory 
lies outside of him, because all his conscious existence 
spends itself in his practical subjectivity. God is his 
alter ego, his other lost half ; God is the complement of 
himself ; in God he is first a perfect man. God is a 
need to him ; something is wanting to him without his 
knowing what it is — God is this something wanting, 
indispensable to him ; God belongs to his nature. The 
world is nothing to religion,* — the world, which 
is in truth the sum of all reality, is revealed in its 
glory only by theory. The joys of theory are the 
sweetest intellectual pleasures of life ; but religion 
knows nothing of the joys of the thinker, of the in- 
vestigator of Xature, of the artist. The idea of the 
universe is wanting to it, the consciousness of the 
really infinite, the consciousness of the species. God 
only is its compensation for the poverty of life, for the 
want of a substantial import, which the true life of 

* " Xatura enim remota providentia et potestate divina prorsus nihil 
est." — Lactantius (I)iv. Inst. lib. 3, c. 28). "Omnia quae creata sunt, 
quamvis ea Deus fecerit valde bona, Creatori tameo comparata, nee bona 
Hunt, eui comparata nee sunt ; altissime quippe et propiio modo quodarn 
de se ipso dixit: Ego sum, qui sum. " — Augustinus (de Perfectione just. 
Horn. c. 14). 



THE ESSENTIAL STAND-POINT OF RELIGION. 253 

rational contemplation presents in unending fulness. 
God is to religion the substitute for the lost world, — 
God is to it in the stead of pure contemplation, the 
life of theory. 

That which we have designated as the practical or 
subjective view is not pure, it is tainted with egoism, 
for therein I have relation to a thing only for my own 
sake ; neither is it self-sufficing, for it places me in re- 
lation to an object above my own level. On the con- 
trary, the theoretic view is joyful, self-sufficing, hapjDy ; 
for here the object calls forth love and admiration^ in 
the light of the free intelligence it is radiant as a dia- 
mond, transparent as a rock-crystal. The theoretic 
view is aesthetic, whereas the practical is unaesthetic. 
Religion therefore finds in God a compensation for the 
want of an aesthetic view. To the religious spirit the 
world is nothing in itself; the admiration, the con- 
templation of it is idolatry ; for the world is a mere 
piece of mechanism.* Hence in religion it is God that 
serves as the object of pure, untamed, i. e., theoretic 
or aesthetic contemplation. God is the existence to 
which the religious man has an objective relation ; in 
God the object is contemplated by him for its own 
sake. God is. an end in himself ; therefore in religion 
he has the significance which in the theoretic view be- 
longs to the object in general. The general being of 
theory is to religion a special being. It is true that 
in religion man, in his relation to God, has relation 
to his own wants as well in a higher as in the lower 
sense : " Give us this day our daily bread ; " but God 
can satisfy all wants of man only because he in him- 
self has no wants, — because he is perfect blessedness. 

* " Pulchras form as et varias, nitidos et amcenos colores amant oculi. 
Non teneant hasc animam meam ; teneat earn Deus qui haec fecit, bona 
quidem valde, sed ipse est bonum meurn, non haec." — Augnstin. (Con- 
fess. 1. x. c. 34). " Vetiti antem sumus (2 Cor. iv. 18.) converti ad ea 
quae videntur .... Amandus igitur solus Deus est : omnis vero iste 
mundus, i. e., omnia sensibilia contemnenda, utendum autem his ad hujus 
vitas necessitatem." — lb. (de Moribus Eccl. Cathol. 1. i. c. 20). 



254 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 



CHAPTER XX. 
THE CONTRADICTION IN THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 



Religion is the relation of man to his own nature, — 
therein lies its truth and its power of moral ameliora- 
tion ; — but ;o his nature not recognised as his own, 
but regarded as another nature, separate, nay, contra- 
distinguished from his own : herein lies its untruth, its 
limitation, its contradiction to reason and morality ; 
herein lies the noxious source of religious fanaticism, 
the chief metaphysical principle of human sacrifices, in 
a word, the prima materia of all the atrocities, all the 
horrible scenes, in the tragedy of religious history. 

The contemplation of the human nature as another, 
a separately existent nature, is, however, in the original 
conception of religion an involuntary, childlike, simple 
act of the mind, that is, one which separates God and 
man just as immediately as it again identifies them. 
But when religion advances in years, and, with years, 
in understanding ; when, within the bosom of religion, 
reflection on religion is awakened, and the conscious- 
ness of the identity of the divine being with the human 
begins to dawn, — in a word, when religion becomes 
theology, the originally involuntary and harmless sep- 
aration of God from man, becomes an intentional, ex- 
cogitated separation, which lias no other object than 
to banish again from the consciousness this identity 
which lias already entered there. 

Hence tin; nearer religion stands to its origin, the 
truer, the more genuine it is, the less is its true nature 
disguised ; that ts to say, in the origin of religion there 
is no qualitative or essential distinction whatever be- 



THE CONTRADICTION IN THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 255 

tween God and man. And the religious man is not 
shocked at this identification ; for his understanding 
is still in harmony with his religion. Thus in ancient 
Judaism, Jehovah was a being differing from the human 
individual in nothing but in duration of existence ; in 
his qualities, his inherent nature, he was entirely sim- 
ilar to man, — had the same passions, the same human, 
nay, even corporeal properties. Only in the later 
Judaism was Jehovah separated in the strictest manner 
from man, and recourse was had to allegory in order 
to give to the old anthropomorphisms another sense 
than that which they originally had. So again in 
Christianity : in its earliest records the divinity of 
Christ is not so decidedly stamped as it afterwards 
became. With Paul especially, Christ is still an un- 
defined being, hovering between heaven and earth, be- 
tween God and man, or, in general, one amongst the 
existences subordinate to the highest, — the first of the 
angels, the first created, but still created ; begotten 
indeed for our sake, but then neither are angels and 
men created, but begotten, for God is their Father 
also. The Church first identified him with God, made 
him the exclusive Son of God, defined his distinction 
from men and angels, and thus gave him the monopoly 
of an eternal, uncreated existence. 

In the genesis of ideas, the first mode in which re- 
flexion on religion, or theology, makes the divine being 
a distinct being, and places him outside of man, is by 
making the existence of God the object of a formal 
proof. 

The proofs of the existence of God have been pro- 
nounced contradictory to the essential nature of re- 
ligion. They are so ; but only in their form as proofs. 
Religion immediately represents the inner nature of 
man as an objective, external being. And the proof 
aims at nothing more than to prove that religion is 
right. The most perfect being is that than which no 
higher can be conceived : God is the highest that man 
conceives or can conceive. This premiss of the onto- 



256 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

logical proof — the most interesting proof, because it 
proceeds from within — expresses the inmost nature of 
religion. That which is the highest for man, from 
which he can make no further abstraction, which is 
the positive limit of his intellect, of his feeling, of his 
sentiment, that is to him God — id quo nihil majus 
cogitari potest* But this highest being would not be 
the highest if he did not exist ; we could then conceive 
a higher being who would be superior to him in the 
fact of existence ; the idea of the highest being directly 
precludes this fiction. Not to exist is a deficiency ; to 
exist is perfection, happiness, bliss. From a being to 
whom man gives all, offers up all that is precious to 
him, he cannot withhold the bliss of existence. The 
contradiction to the religious spirit in the proof of the 
existence of God lies only in this, that the existence 
is thought of separately, and thence arises the appear- 
ance that God is a mere conception, a being existing 
in idea only, — an appearance however which is imme- 
diately dissipated ; for the very result of the proof is, 
that to God belongs an existence distinct from an ideal 
one, an existence apart from man, apart from thought, 
■ — a real self-existence. 

The proof therefore is only thus far discordant with 
the spirit of religion, that is presents as a formal de- 
duction the implicit enthymeme or immediate conclu- 
sion of religion, exhibits in logical relation, and there- 
fore distinguishes, what religion immediately unites ; 
for to religion God is not a matter of abstract thought, 
— he is a present truth and reality. But that every 
religion in its idea of God makes a latent, unconscious 
inference, is confessed in its polemic against other re- 
ligions. ■" Ye heathens,' 7 says the Jew or the Christ- 
ian, 'wen' able to conceive nothing higher as your 
deities because ye were sunk in sinful desires. Your 
God rests on a conclusion, the premisses of which are 
your sensual impulses, your passions. You thought 
thus : the most excellent life is, to live out one's im- 
pulses without restraint ; and because this life was the 



THE CONTRADICTION IN THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 257 

most excellent, the truest, you made it your God. Your 
God was your carnal nature, your heaven only a free 
theatre for the passions which, in society and in the 
conditions of actual life generally, had to suffer re- 
straint. 7 ' But, naturally, in relation to itself no religion 
is conscious of such an inference, for the highest of 
which it is capable is its limit, has the force of neces- 
sity, is not a thought, not a conception, but immediate 
reality. 

The proofs of the existence of God have for their 
aim to make the internal external, to separate it from 
man* His existenee being proved, God is no longer 
a merely relative, but a noumenal being (Ding an sich) : 
he is not only a being for us, a being in our faith, our 
feeling, our nature, he is a being in himself, a being 
external to us, — in a word, not merely a belief, a feel- 
ing, a thought, but also a real existence apart from 
belief, feeling, and thought. But such an existence is 
no other than a sensational existence ; i. e., an exist- 
ence conceived according to the forms of our senses. 

The idea of sensational existence is indeed already 
involved in the characteristic expression "external to 
us." It is true that a sophistical theology refuses to 
interpret the word " external " in its proper, natural 
sense, and substitutes the indefinite expression of inde- 
pendent, separate existence. But if the externality is 
only figurative, the existence also is figurative. And 
yet we are here only concerned with existence in the 
proper sense, and external existence is alone the de- 
finite, real, unshrinking expression for separate exist- 
ence. . 

Real, sensational existence is that which is not de- 
pendent on my own mental spontaneity or activity, but 

* At the same time, however, their result is, to prove the nature of 
man. The various proofs of the existence of God are nothing else than 
various highly interesting forms in which the human nature affirms itself. 
Thus, for example, the physico-theological proof (or proof from design) 
is the self-affirmation of the calculated activity of the understanding. 
Every philosophic system is, in this sense, a proof of the existence of God. 



258 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

by which I am involuntarily affected, which is when I 
am not. when I do not think of' it or feel it. The 
existence of God must therefore be in space — in gen- 
eral, a qualitative, sensational existence. But God is 
not seen, not heard, not perceived by the senses. He 
does not exist for me. if I do not exist for him : if I 
do not believe in a God, there is no God for me. If 
I am not devoutly disposed, if I do not raise myself 
above the life of the senses, he has no place in my 
consciousness. Thus he exists only in so far as he is 
felt, thought, believed in : — the addition ''for me" is 
unnecessary. His existence therefore is a real one, 
yet at the same time not a real one ; — a spiritual 
existence, says the theologian. But spiritual existence 
is only an existence in thought, in feeling, in belief: 
so that his existence is a medium between sensational 
existence and conceptional existence, a medium full of 
contradiction. Or : he is a sensational existence, to 
which however all the conditions of sensational exis- 
tence are wanting : — consequently an existence at once 
sensational and not sensational, an existence which 
contradicts the idea of the sensational, or only a vague 
existence in general, which is fundamentally a sensa- 
tional one. but which, in order that this may not 
become evident, is divested of all the predicates of a 
real, sensational existence. But such an " existence 
in general" is self-contradictory. To existence belongs 
full, definite reality. 

A necessary consequence of this contradiction is 
Atheism. The existence of God is essentially an em- 
pirical existence, without having its distinctive marks ; 
it ta in itself a matter of experience, and yet in reality 
no object of experience. It calls upon man to seek it 
in Reality: it impregnates his mind with sensational 
conceptions and pretensions ; hence, when these are 
not fulfilled — when, on the contrary, he finds experience 
in contradiction with these conceptions, he is perfectly 
justified in denying thai existence. 

Kant is well known to have maintained, in his 



THE CONTRADICTION IN THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 259 

critique of the proofs of the existence of God, that 
that existence is not susceptible of proof from reason. 
He did not merit, on this account, the blame which 
was cast on him by Hegel. The idea of the existence 
of God in those proofs is a thoroughly empirical one ; 
but I cannot deduce empirical existence from an a priori 
idea. The only real ground of blame against Kant is, 
that in laying down this position he supposed it to be 
something remarkable, whereas it is self-evident. Rea- 
son cannot constitute itself an object of sense. I can- 
not, in thinking, at the same time represent what I 
think as a sensible object, external to me. The proof 
of the existence of God transcends the limits of the 
reason ; true ; but in the same sense in which sight, 
hearing, smell transcend, the limits of the reason. It 
is absurd to reproach reason, that it does not satisfy a 
demand which can only address itself to the senses. 
Existence, empirical existence, is proved to me by the 
senses alone ; and in the question as to the being of 
God, the existence implied has not the significance of 
inward reality, of truth, but the significance of a 
formal, external existence. Hence there is perfect 
truth in the allegation, that the belief that God is or 
is not has no consequence with respect to inward 
moral dispositions. It is true that the thought — there 
is a God, is inspiring ; but here the is means inward 
reality ; here the existence is a movement of inspira- 
tion, an act of aspiration. Just in proportion as this 
existence becomes a prosaic, an empirical truth, the 
inspiration is extinguished. 

Religion, therefore, in so far as it is founded on the 
existence of God as an empirical truth, is a matter of 
indifference to the inward disposition. As, necessarily, 
in the religious cultus, ceremonies, observances, sacra- 
ments, apart from the moral spirit or disposition, be- 
come in themselves an important fact : so also, at last, 
belief in the existence of God becomes, apart from the 
inherent quality, the spiritual import of the idea of 
God, a chief point in religion. If thou only believest 



260 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

in God — believest that God is, thou art already saved. 
Whether under this God thou conceivest a really divine 
being or a monster, a Nero or a Caligula, an image of 
thy passions, thy revenge, or ambition, it is all one, — 
the main point is that thou be not an atheist. The 
history of religion has amply confirmed this consequence 
which we here draw from the idea of the divine exist- 
ence. If the existence of God, taken by itself, had not 
rooted itself as a religious truth in minds, there would 
never have been those infamous, senseless, horrible 
ideas of God which stigmatize the history of religion 
and theology. The existence of God was a common, 
external, and yet at the same time a holy thing : — what 
wonder, then, if on this ground the commonest, rudest, 
most unholy conceptions and opinions sprang up ! 

Atheism was supposed, and is even now supposed, 
to be the negation of all moral principle, of all moral 
foundations and bonds : if God is not, all distinction 
between good and bad, virtue and vice, is abolished. 
Thus the distinction lies only in the existence of God ; 
the reality of virtue lies not in itself, but out of it. 
And assuredly it is not from an attachment to virtue, 
from a conviction of its intrinsic worth and importance, 
that the reality of it is thus bound up with the existence 
of God. On the contrary, the belief that God is the 
necessary condition of virtue, is the belief in the no- 
thingness of virtue in itself. 

It is indeed worthy of remark, that the idea of the 
empirical existence of God has been perfectly developed 
in modern times, in which empiricism and materialism 
in general have arrived at their full blow. It is true 
that even in the original, simple religious mind, God 
is an empirical existence to be found in a place, though 
above the earth. But here this conception has not so 
naked, so prosaic a significance ; the imagination 
identifies again the external God with the soul of 
man. The imagination is, in general, the true 
place of an existence which is absent, not present 
to the senses, though nevertheless sensational in its 



THE CONTRADICTION IN THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 261 

essence.* Only the imagination solves the contradic- 
tion in an existence which is at once sensational and 
not sensational ; only the imagination is the preserva- 
tive from atheism. In the imagination, existence has 
sensational effects, — existence affirms itself as a power ; 
with the essence of sensational existence the imagina- 
tion associates also the phenomena of sensational 
existence. Where the existence of God is a living 
truth, an object on which the imagination exercises 
itself, there also appearances of God are believed in.f 
Where, on the contrary, the fire of the religious imagin- 
ation is extinct, where the sensational effects or appear- 
ances necessarily connected with an essentially sensa- 
tional existence cease, there the existence becomes a 
dead, self-contradictory existence* which falls irrecov- 
erably into the negation of atheism. 

The belief in the existence of God is the belief in a 
special existence, separate from the existence of man 
and Nature. A special existence can only be proved 
in a special manner. This faith is therefore only then 
a true and living one when special effects, immediate 
appearances of God, miracles, are believed in. Where, 
on the other hand, the belief in God is identified with 

* " Christ is ascended on high that is, he not only sits there 

above, but he is also here below. And he is gone thither to the very end 
that he might be here below, and fill all things, and be in all places, which 
he could not do while on earth, for here he could not be seen by all bodily 
eyes. Therefore he sits above, where every man can see him, and he has 
to do with every man." — Luther (T. xiii. p. 643). That is to say : Christ 
or God is an object, an existence, of the imagination ; in the imagination 
he is limited to no place, — he is present and objective to every one. God 
exists in heaven, but is for that reason omnipresent ; for this heaven i3 
the imagination. 

f " Thou hast not to complain that thou art less experienced than was 

Abraham or Isaac. Thou also hast appearances Thou hast holy 

baptism, the supper of the Lord, the bread and wine, which are figures 
and forms, under and in which the present God speaks to thee, and acts 

upon thee, in thy ears, eyes, and heart He appears to thee in 

baptism, and it is he himself who baptizes thee, and speaks to thee .... 
Everything is full of divine appearances and utterances, if he is on thy 
side." — Luther (T. ii. p. 466. See also on this subject, T. xix. p. 407.) 



262 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the belief in the world, where the belief in God is no 
longer a special faith, where the general being of the 
world takes possession of the whole man, there also 
vanishes the belief in special effects and appearances 
of God. Belief in God is wrecked, is stranded on the 
belief in the world, in natural effects as the only true 
ones. As here the belief in miracles is no longer any- 
thing more than the belief in historical, past miracles, 
so the existence of God is also only an historical, in 
itself atheistic conception. 



THE CONTRADICTION IN THE REVELATION OF GOD. 263 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE REVELATION 
OF GOD. 



With the idea of the existence of God is connected the 
idea of revelation. God's attestation of his existence, 
the authentic testimony that God exists, is revelation. 
Proofs drawn from reason are merely subjective ; the 
objective, the only true proof of the existence of God, 
is his revelation. God speaks to man ; revelation is 
the word of God ; he sends forth a voice which thrills 
the soul, and gives it the joyful certainty that God 
really is. The word is the gospel of life, — the criterion 
of existence and non-existence. Belief in revelation i3 
the culminating point of religious objectivism. The 
subjective conviction of the existence of God here be- 
comes an indubitable, external, historical fact. The 
existence of God, in itself, considered simply as exist- 
ence, is already an external, empirical existence ; still, 
it is as yet only thought, conceived, and therefore 
doubtful ; hence the assertion that all proofs produce 
no satisfactory certainty. This conceptional existence 
converted into a real existence, a fact, is revelation. 
God has revealed himself, has demonstrated himself: 
who then can have any further doubt ? The certainty 
of the existence of God is involved for me in the cer- 
tainty of the revelation. A God who only exists 
without revealing himself, who exists for me only 
through my own mental act, such a God is a merely 
abstract, imaginary, subjective God ; a God who gives 
me a knowledge of himself through his own act is alone 
a God who truly exists, who proves himself to exist, 



264 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

- — an objective God. Faith in revelation is the imme- 
diate certainty of the religious mind, that what it be- 
lieves, wishes, conceives, really is. Religion is a 
dream, in which our own conceptions and emotions 
appear to us as separate existences, beings out of our- 
selves. The religious mind does not distinguish be- 
tween subjective and objective. — it has no doubts ; it 
has the faculty, not of discerning other things than 
itself, but of seeing its own conceptions out of itself, 
as distinct beings. What is in itself a mere theory, is 
to the religious mind a practical belief, a matter of 
conscience, — a fact. A fact is that which from being 
an object of the intellect becomes a matter of con- 
science ; a fact is that which one cannot criticise or 
attack without being guilty of a crime ;* a fact is that 
which one must believe nolens volens ; a fact is a phy- 
sical force, not an argument, — it makes no appeal to 
the reason. ye short-sighted religious philosophers 
of Germany, who fling at our heads the facts of the 
religious consciousness, to stun our reason and make 
us the slaves of your childish superstition, — do you not 
see that facts are just as relative, as various, as sub- 
jective, as the ideas of the different religions ? Were 
not the Gods of Olympus also facts, self-attesting exist- 
ences ?f Were not the ludicrous miracles of paganism 

* The denial of a fact is not a matter of indifference ; it is something 
morally evil, — a disowning of what is known to be true. Christianity 
made its articles of faith objective, i. e., undeniable, unassailable facts, 
thus overpowering the reason, and taking the mind prisoner by the force 
of external reality : herein we have the true explanation why and how 
Christianity, Protestant as well as Catholic, enunciated and enforced with 
all solemnity the principle, that heresy — the denial of an idea or a fact 
which forms an article of faith — is an object of punishment by the tem- 
poral power, i. r., a crime. What in theory is an external fact, becomes 
in practice an external force. In this respect, Christianity is far below 
Mahomedanism, to which the crime of heresy is unknown. 

f " Pnesentiam sa'pe divi suam de< -larant." — Cicero (de Nat. D. 1. ii.) 
Cicero's works (de N'at. I), and de Divinatione) are especially interesting, 
because the arguments there u>ed for the reality of the objects of pagan 
faith, are virtually the same as &OS6 urged in the present day by theo- 
logians and the adherents of positive religion generally, for the reality of 
the objects of Christian faith. 



THE CONTRADICTION IN THE REVELATION OF GOD. 265 

regarded as facts ? Were not angels and demons his- 
torical persons ? Did they not really appear to men ? 
Did not Balaam's ass really speak ? Was not the story 
of Balaam's ass just as much believed even by enlight- 
ened scholars of the last century, as the Incarnation 
or any other miracle ? A fact, I repeat, is a conception 
about the truth of which there is no doubt, because it 
is no object of theory, but of feeling, which desires 
that what it wishes, what it believes, should be true. 
A fact is that, the denial of which is forbidden, if not 
by an external law, yet by an internal one. A fact is 
every possibility which passes for a reality, every 
conception which, for the age wherein it is held to be 
a fact, expresses a want, and is for that reason an im- 
passable limit of the mind. A fact is every wish that 
projects itself on reality : in short, it is everything 
that is not doubted simply because it is not — must not 
be — doubted. 

The religious mind, according to its nature as hith- 
erto unfolded, has the immediate certainty that all its 
involuntary, spontaneous affections are impressions 
from without, manifestations of another being. The 
religious mind makes itself the passive, God the ac- 
tive being. God is activity ; but that which deter- 
mines him to activity, which causes his activity 
(originally only omnipotence, potentia) to become real 
activity, is not himself, — he needs nothing,— but man, 
the religious subject. At the same time, however, man is 
reciprocally determined by God ; he views himself as 
passive ; he receives from God determinate revelations, 
determinate proofs of his existence. Thus in revelation 
man determines himself as that which determines God, 
L e., revelation is simply the self-determination of man, 
only that between himself the determined, and himself 
the determining, he interposes an object— God, a dis- 
tinct being. God is the medium by which man brings 
about the reconciliation of himself with his own na- 
ture : God is the bond, the vinculum substantiate, between 
the essential nature — the species — and the individual. 

M 



266 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

The belief in revelation exhibits in the clearest 
manner the characteristic illusion of the religious con- 
sciousness. The general premiss of this belief is : man 
can of himself know nothing of God ; all this know- 
ledge is merely vain, earthly, human. But God is a 
superhuman being ; God is known only by himself. 
Thus we know nothing of God beyond what he reveals 
to us. The knowledge imparted by God is alone 
divine, superhuman, supernatural knowledge. By 
means of revelation, therefore, we know God through 
himself; for revelation is the word of God — God de- 
claring himself. Hence, in the belief in revelation 
man makes himself a negation, he goes out of and 
above himself; he places revelation in opposition to 
human knowledge and opinion ; in it is contained a 
hidden knowledge, the fulness of all supersensuous 
mysteries ; here reason must hold its peace. But 
nevertheless the divine relevation is determined by 
the human nature. God speaks not to brutes or angels, 
but to men ; hence he uses human speech and human 
conceptions. Man is an object to God, before God 
perceptibly imparts himself to man ; he thinks of man ; 
he determines his action in accordance with the nature 
of man and his needs. God is indeed free in will ; he 
can reveal himself or not ; but he is not free as to the 
understanding ; he cannot reveal to man whatever he 
will, but only what is adapted to man, what is com- 
mensurate with his nature such as it actually is ; he 
reveals what lie must reveal, if his revelation is to be 
a revelation for man, and not for some other kind of 
being. Now what God thinks in relation to man is 
determined by the idea of man — it has arisen out of 
reflection on human nature. God puts himself in the 
place of man, and thinks of himself as this other being 
can and should think of him ; he thinks of himself, not 
with his own thinking power, but with man's. In the 
scheme of his revelation God must have reference not 
to himself, but to man's power of comprehension. That 
which comes from Goa to man, comes to man only 



THE CONTRADICTION IN THE REVELATION OF GOD. 267 

from man in God, that is, only from the ideal nature 
of man to the phenomenal man, from the species to the 
individual. Thus, between the divine revelation and 
the so-called human reason or nature, there is no other 
than an illusory distinction ; — the contents of the 
divine revelation are of human origin, for they have 
proceeded not from God as God, but from God as de- 
termined by human reason, human wants, that is, 
directly from human reason and human wants. And 
so in revelation man goes out of himself, in order, by 
a circuitous path, to return to himself! Here we have 
a striking confirmation of the position, that the secret 
of theology is nothing else than anthropology — the 
knowledge of God nothing else than a knowledge of 
man! 

Indeed, the religious consciousness itself admits, in 
relation to past times, the essentially human quality 
of revelation. The religious consciousness of a later 
age is no longer satisfied with a Jehovah who is from 
head to foot a man, and does not shrink from becoming 
visible as such. It recognises that those were merely 
images in which God accommodated himself to the 
comprehension of men in that age, that is, merely hu- 
man images. But it does not apply this mode of 
interpretation to ideas accepted as revelation in the 
present age, because it is yet itself steeped in those 
ideas. Nevertheless, every revelation is simply a 
revelation of the nature of man to existing men. In 
revelation man's latent nature is disclosed to him, be- 
comes an object to him. He is determined, affected 
by his own nature as by another being ; he receives 
from the hands of God what his own unrecognised 
nature entails upon him as a necessity, under certain 
conditions of time and circumstance. Eeason, the 
mind of the species, operates on the subjective, uncul- 
tured man only under the image of a personal being. 
Moral laws have force for him only as the command- 
ments of a Divine Will, which has at once the power 
to punish and the glance which nothing escapes. That 

m2 



268 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

-which his own nature, his reason, his conscience says 
to him, does not bind him, because the subjective, un- 
cultured man sees in conscience, in reason, so far as he 
recognises it as his own, no universal, objective power ; 
hence he must separate from himself that which gives 
him moral laws, and place it in opposition to himself, 
as a distinct personal being. 

Belief in revelation is a child-like belief, and is only- 
respectable so long as it is child-like. But the child is 
determined from without. And revelation has for its 
object to effect by God's help, what man cannot attain 
by himself. Hence, revelation has been called the 
education of the human race. This is correct ; only, 
revelation must not be regarded as outside the nature 
of man. There is within him an inward necessity 
which impels him to present moral and philosophical 
doctrines in the form of narratives and fables, and an 
equal necessity to represent that impulse as a revela- 
tion. The mythical poet has an end in view — that of 
making men good and wise ; he designedly adopts the 
form of fable as the most appropriate and vivid method 
of representation ; but at the same time, he is himself 
urged to this mode of teaching by his love of fable, by 
his inward impulse. So it is with a revelation enun- 
ciated by an individual. This individual has an aim ; 
but at the same time he himself lives in the conceptions 
by means of which he realizes this aim. Man, by 
means of the imagination, involuntarily contemplates 
his inner nature ; he represents it as out of himself. 
The nature of man, of the species — thus working on 
him through the irresistible power of the imagination, 
and contemplated as the law of his thought and action 
— is God. 

Herein lie the beneficial moral effects of the belief 
in revelation. 

But as Nature "unconsciously produces results 
which look as if they were produced consciously/ 7 so 
revelation generates moral actions, which do not, 
however, proceed from morality ; — moral actions, but 



THE CONTRADICTION IN THE REVELATION OF GOD. 269 

no moral dispositions. Moral rules are indeed obser- 
ved, but they are severed from the inward disposition, 
the heart, by being represented as the commandments 
of an external law-giver, by being placed in the cate- 
gory of arbitrary laws, police regulations. What is 
done, is done not because it is good and right, but be- 
cause it is commanded by God. The inherent quality 
of the deed is indifferent ; whatever God commands 
is right.* If these commands are in accordance with 
reason, with ethics, it is well ; but so far as the idea 
of revelation is concerned, it is accidental. The cer- 
emonial laws of the Jews were revealed, divine, 
though in themselves adventitious and arbitrary. The 
Jews received from Jehovah the command to steal ; — 
in a special case, it is true. 

But the belief in revelation not only injures the 
moral sense and taste, — the aesthetics of virtue ; it 
poisons, nay it destroys, the divinest feeling in man — 
the sense of truth, the perception and sentiment of 
truth. The revelation of God is a determinate reve- 
lation, given at a particular epoch : God revealed 
himself once for all in the year so and so, and that, 
not to the universal man, to the man of all times and 
places, to the reason, to the species, but to certain 
limited individuals. A revelation in a given time and 
place must be fixed in writing, that its blessings may 
be transmitted uninjured. Hence the belief in revela- 
tion is, at least for those of a subsequent age, belief in 
a written revelation ; but the necessary consequence 
of a faith in which an historical book, necessarily sub- 
ject to all the conditions of a temporal, finite produc- 
tion, is regarded as an eternal, absolute, universally 
authoritative word, is — superstition and sophistry. 

* " Quod crudeliter ab hominibus sine Dei jussu fieret ant factum est, 
id debuit ab Hebrais fieri, quia a deo vitas et necis summo arbitrio, jussi 
bellum ita gerebant." — J. Clericus (Comm. in Mos. Num. c. 31, 7.) 
" Multa gessit Samson, quse vix possent defendi, nisi Dei, a quo homines 
pendent, instrumentum raisse censeatur." — lb. (Comm. in Judicum, c. 
14, 19.) See also Luther, e. g, (T. i. p. 339, T. xvi. p. 495.) 



270 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Faith in a written revelation is a real, unfeigned, 
and so far respectable faith, only where it is believed 
that all in the sacred writings is significant, true, holy, 
divine. Where, on the contrary, the distinction is 
made between the human and divine, the relatively 
true and the absolutely true, the historical and the 
permanent, — where it is not held that all without dis- 
tinction is unconditionally true ; there the verdict of 
unbelief, that the Bible is no divine book, is already 
introduced into the interpretation of the Bible, — there, 
at least indirectly, that is, in a crafty, dishonest way, 
its title to the character of a divine revelation is 
denied. Unity, unconditionality, freedom from ex- 
ceptions, immediate certitude, is alone the character 
of divinity. A book that imposes on me the necessity 
of discrimination, the necessity of criticism, in order 
to separate the divine from the human, the permanent 
from the temporary, is no longer a divine, certain, 
infallible book, — it is degraded to the rank of profane 
books ; for every profane book has the same quality, 
that together with or in the human it contains the 
divine, that is, together with or in the individual it 
contains the universal and eternal. But that only is 
a truly divine book in which there is not merely some- 
thing good and something bad, something permanent 
and something temporary, but in which all comes as 
it were from one crucible, all is eternal, true and good. 
What sort of a revelation is that in which I must first 
listen to the apostle Paul, then to Peter, then to James, 
then to John, then to Matthew, then to Mark, then to 
Luke, until at last I come to a passage where my soul, 
athirst for God, can cry out : Eureka ! here speaks 
the Holy Spirit himself! here is something for me, 
something for all times and all men. How true, on 
the contrary, was the conception of the old faith, when 
it extended inspiration to the very words, to the very 
letters of Scripture! The word is not a matter of in- 
difference in relation to the thought ; a definite thought 
can only be rendered by a definite word. Another 



THE CONTEADICTION IN THE REVELATION OF GOD. 271 

word, another letter — another sense. It is true that 
such faith is superstition ; but this superstition is 
alone the true, undisguised, open faith, which is not 
ashamed of its consequences. If God numbers the hairs 
on the head of a man, if no sparrow falls to the ground 
without his will, how could he leave to the stupidity 
and caprice of scribes his Word' — that word on which 
depends the everlasting salvation of man ? Why 
should he not dictate his thoughts to their pen in 
order to guard them from the possibility of disfigura- 
tion ? — " But if man were a mere organ of the Holy 
Spirit, human freedom would be abolished ! " * Oh 
what a pitiable argument ! Is human freedom, then, 
of more value than divine truth ? Or does hu- 
man freedom consist only in the distortion of divine 
truth ? 

And just as necessarily as the belief in a determin- 
ate historical revelation is associated with supersti- 
tion, so necessarily is it associated with sophistry. 
The Bible contradicts morality, contradicts reason, 
contradicts itself, innumerable times ; and yet it is 
the word of God, eternal truth, and " truth cannot 
contradict itself." t How does the believer in revela- 
tion elude this contradiction between the idea is his 
own mind, of revelation as divine, harmonious truth, 
and this supposed actual revelation ? Only by self- 
deception, only by the silliest subterfuges, only by the 
most miserable, transparent sophisms. Christian 
sophistry is the necessary product of Christian faith, 
especially of faith in the Bible as a divine revelation. 

Truth, absolute truth, is given objectively in the 
Bible, subjectively in faith ; for towards that which 

* It was very justly remarked by the Jansenists against the Jesuits ; 
" Vouloir reconnoitre dans l'Ecriture quelque chose de la foiblesse et de 
1'esprit naturel de l'homme, c'est donner la liberte a chacun d'en faire le 
discern ement et de rejetter ce qui mi plaira de l'Ecriture, comme venant 
plutot de la foiblesse de l'homme que de 1'esprit de Dieu." — Bayle (Diet, 
art. Adam (Jean) Rem. E.) 

f " Nee in scriptura divina fas sit sentire aliquid contrarietatis." — 
Petrus L. (1. ii. dist. ii. c. i.) Similar thoughts are found in the Fathers. 



272 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

God himself speaks I can only be believing, resigned, 
receptive. Nothing is left to the understanding, the 
reason, but a formal, subordinate office ; it has a false 
position, a position essentially contradictory to its 
nature. The understanding in itself is here indiffer- 
ent to truth, indifferent to the distinction between the 
true and the false ; it has no criterion in itself ; what- 
ever is found in revelation is true, even when it is in 
direct contradiction with reason. The understanding 
is helplessly given over to the hap-hazard of the most 
ignoble empiricism ; — whatever I find in divine rev- 
elation I must believe, and if necessary, my under- 
standing must defend it ; the understanding is the 
watch-dog of revelation ; it must let everything with- 
out distinction be imposed on it as truth, — discrimin- 
ation would be doubt, would be a crime : consequently, 
nothing remains to it but an adventitious, indifferent, 
i. e., disingenuous, sophistical, torturous mode of 
thought, which is occupied only with groundless dis- 
tinctions and subterfuges, with ignominious tricks and 
evasions. But the more man, by the progress of time, 
becomes estranged from revelation, the more the 
understanding ripens into independence, — the more 
glaring, necessarily, appears the contradiction between 
the understanding and belief in revelation. The be- 
liever can then prove revelation only by incurring 
contradiction with himself, with truth, with the un- 
derstanding, only by the most impudent assumptions, 
onlv by shameless falsehoods, only by the sin against 
the' Holy Ghost. 



THE CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD. 273 



CHAPTER XXIL 

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD 
IN GENERAL. 



The grand principle, the central point of Christian 
sophistry, is the idea of God» God is the human being, 
and yet he must be regarded as another, a superhuman 
being. God is universal, abstract Being, simply the 
idea of Being ; and yet he must be conceived as a per- 
sonal, individual being ;— or God is a person,, and yet 
he must be regarded as God, as universal, L e., not as 
a personal being. God is ; his existence is certain, 
more certain than ours ; he has an existence distinct 
from us and from things in general, L e., an individual 
existence; and yet his existence must be held a spiritual 
one, L e,, an existence not perceptible as a special one. 
One half of the definition is always in contradiction 
with the other half: the statement of what must be 
held always annihilates the statement of what is. The 
fundamental idea is a contradiction which can be con- 
cealed only by sophisms. A God who does not trouble 
himself about us, who does not hear our prayers, who 
does not see us and love us, is no God ; thus humanity 
is made an essential predicate of God ; but at the same 
time it is said : a God who does not exist in and by 
himself, out of men, above men, as another being, is a 
phantom ; and thus it is made an essential predicate of 
God that he is non-human and extra-human. A God 
who is not as we are, who has not consciousness, not 
intelligence, L e., not a personal understanding, a per- 
sonal consciousness, (as, for example, the " substance' 7 
of Spinoza,) is no God. Essential identity with us is 
M 3 



274 THE ESSENCE OP CHRISTIANITY. 

the chief condition of deity ; the idea of deity is made 
dependent on the idea of personality, of consciousness, 
quo nihil majus cogitari potest. But, it is said in the 
same breath, a God who is not essentially distinguished 
from us is no God. 

The essence of religion is the immediate, involun- 
tary, unconscious contemplation of the human nature 
as another, a distinct nature. But when this projected 
image of human nature is made an object of reflection, 
of theology, it becomes an inexhaustible mine of false- 
hoods, illusions, contradictions, and sophisms. 

A peculiarly characteristic artifice and pretext of 
Christian sophistry is the doctrine of the unsearchable- 
ness,thc incomprehensibility of the divine nature. But, 
as will be shown, the secret of this incomprehensibility 
is nothing further than that a known quality is made 
into an unknown one, a natural quality into a super- 
natural, i. e., an unnatural one, so as to produce the 
appearance, the illusion, that the divine nature is dif- 
ferent from the human, and is eo ipso an incomprehen- 
sible one. 

In the original sense of religion, the incomprehensi- 
bility of God has only the significance of an impassion- 
ed expression. Thus, when we are affected by a sur- 
prising phenomenon, we exclaim : It is incredible, it is 
beyond conception ! though afterwards, when we reco- 
ver our self-possession, we find the object of our 
astonishment nothing less than incomprehensible. In 
the truly religious sense, incomprehensibility is not the 
dead full stop which reflection places wherever under- 
standing deserts it, but a pathetic note of exclamation 
marking the impression which the imagination makes 
on the feelings. The imagination is the original organ 
of religion. Between God and man. in the primitive 
sense of religion, there is on the one hand only a dis- 
tinction in relation to existence, according to which 
God as a Belf-subsistenl being is the antithesis of man 
as a dependent being : on the other hand there is only 
a quantitative distinction, i. e., a distinction derived 



THE C0NTKADICTI0N IN THE NATURE OF GOD. 275 

from the imagination, for the distinctions of the imagin* 
ktion are only quantitative. The infinity of God in 
religion is quantitative infinity ; God is and has all 
that man has, but in an infinitely greater measure. The 
nature of God is the nature of the imagination unfold- 
ed, made objective.* God is a being conceived under 
the forms of the senses, but freed from the limits of 
sense, — a being at once unlimited and sensational. 
But what is the imagination ? — limitless activity of the 
senses. God is eternal, i.e., he exists at all times; 
God is omnipresent, i. e., he exists in all places ; God 
is the omniscient being, i. e., the being to whom every 
individual thing, every sensible existence, is an object 
without distinction, without limitation of time and 
place. 

Eternity and omnipresence are sensational qualities, 
for in them there is no negation of existence in time and 
space, but only of exclusive limitation to a particular 
time, to a particular place. In like manner omnis- 
cience is a sensational quality, a sensational knowledge. 
Religion has no hesitation in attributing to God him- 
self the nobler senses : God sees and hears all things. 
But the divine omniscience is a power of knowing 
through the senses while yet the necessary quality, the 
essential determination of actual knowledge through 
the senses is denied to it. My senses present sensible 
•objects to me only separately and in succession ; but 
God sees all sensible things at once, all locality in an 
unlocal manner, all temporal things in an untemporal 
manner, all objects of sense in an unsensational man- 
ner.f That is to say : I extend the horizon of my 
senses by the imagination; I form to myself a confused 

* This is especially apparent in the superlative, and the preposition 
super, which distinguishes the divine predicates, and which very early — as, 
for example, with the Neo-Platonists, the Christians among heathen phi- 
losophers — played, a chief part in theology. 

f " Scit itaque Deus, quanta sit multitudo pulicum, culicum, musca- 
rurn et piscium et quot nascantur, quotve moriantur, sed non scit hoc per 
momenta singula, imo simul et semel omnia." — Petrus L. (1. i. dist. 
39. o. 3). 



276 THE ESSENCE OP CHRISTIANITY. 

conception of the whole of things : and this concep- 
tion, which exalts me above the limited stand-point of 
the senses, and therefore affects me agreeably, I posit 
as a divine reality. I feel the fact that my knowledge 
is tied to a local stand-point, to sensational experience, 
as a limitation ; what I feel as a limitation I do away 
with in my imagination, which furnishes free space for 
the play of my feelings. This negativing of limits 
by the imagination is the positing of omniscience as 
a divine power and reality. But at the same time there 
is only a quantitative distinction between omniscience 
and my knowledge ; the quality of the knowledge is 
the same. In fact it would be impossible for me to 
predicate omniscience of an object or being external 
to myself, if this omniscience were essentially different 
from my own knowledge, if it were not a mode of 
perception of my own, if it had nothing in common 
with my own power of cognition. That which is 
recognised by the senses is as much the object and 
content of .the divine omniscience as of my know- 
ledge. Imagination does away only with the limit 
of quantity, not of quality. The proposition that 
our knowledge is limited, means : we know only some 
things, a few things, not all. 

The beneficial influence of religion rests on ,this 
extension of the sensational consciousness. In reli- 
gion man is in the open air, sub deo: in the sensa- 
tional consciousness he is in his narrow confined 
dwelling-house. Religion has relation essentially, 
originally — and only in its origin is it something 
holy, true, pure and good — to the immediate sensa- 
tional consciousness alone ; it is the setting aside of 
the limits of sense. Isolated, uninstructed men and 
nations preserve religion in its original sense, because 
they themselves remain in that mental state which is 
the source of religion. The more limited a man's 
sphere of vision, the less he knows of history. Na- 
ture, philosophy — the more ardently does he cling 
to his religion. 



THE CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD. 277 

For this reason the religious man feels no need 
of culture- Why had the Hebrews no art, no science, 
as the Greeks had? Because they felt no need of 
it. To tliem this need was supplied by Jehovah. 
In the divine omniscience man raises himself above 
the limits of his own knowledge;* in the divine omni- 
presence, above the limits of his local stand-point ; 
in the divine eternity, above the limits of his time. 
The religious man is happy in his imagination ; he 
has all things in mice : his possessions are always 
portable. Jehovah accompanies me everywhere ; I 
need not travel out of myself; I have in my God 
the sum of all treasures and precious things, of all 
that is worth knowledge and remembrance. But 
culture is dependent on external things ; it has many 
and various wants, for it overcomes the limits of 
sensational consciousness and life by real activity, 
not by the magical power of the religious imagina- 
tion. Hence the Christian religion also, as has been 
often mentioned already, has in its essence no prin- 
ciple of culture, for it triumphs over the limitations 
and difficulties of earthly life only through the ima- 
gination, only in God, in heaven. God is all that 
the heart needs and desires — all good things, all 
blessings. " Dost thou desire love, or faithfulness, 
or truth, or consolation, or perpetual presence, this 
is always in Him without measure. Dost thou de- 
sire beauty — He is the supremely beautiful. Dost thou 
desire riches — all riches are in Him. Dost thou 
desire power — He is supremely powerful. Or what- 
ever thy heart desires, it is found a thousandfold in 
him, in the best, the single good, which is God."t 
But how can he who has all in God, who already 
enjoys heavenly bliss in the imagination, experience 
that want, that sense of poverty, which is the impulse 
to all culture ? Culture has no other object than to 

* " Qui scientum cuncta sciunt, quid nescire nequeunt ?" — Liber Mc- 
ditat. c. 26 (among the spurious writings of Augustine). 

* Tauler, 1. c. p. 312. 



278 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

realize an earthly heaven ; and the religious heaven is 
only realized or won by religious activity. 

The difference, however, between God and man, 
which is originally only quantitative, is by reflection 
developed into a qualitative difference ; and thus what 
was originally only an emotional impression, an imme- 
diate expression of admiration, of rapture, an influence 
of the imagination on the feelings, has fixity given to 
it as an objective quality, as real incomprehensibility. 
The favourite expression of reflection in relation to 
this subject is, that we can indeed know concerning 
God that he has such and such attributes, but not how 
he has them. For example, that the predicate of the 
Creator essentially belongs to God, that he created 
the world, and not out of matter already existing, but 
out of nothing, by an act of almighty power, — this is 
clear, certain — yes, indubitable ; but how this is pos- 
sible naturally passes our understanding. That is to 
say : the generic idea is clear, certain, but the specific 
idea is unclear, uncertain. 

The idea of activity, of making, of creation, is in it- 
self a divine idea ; it is therefore unhesitatingly ap- 
plied to God. In activity, man feels himself free, 
unlimited, happy ; in passivity, limited, oppressed, un- 
happy. Activity is the positive sense of one's person- 
ality. That is positive which in man is accompanied 
with joy ; hence God is, as we have already said, the 
idea of pure, unlimited joy. We succeed only in what 
we do willingly ; joyful effort conquers all things. 
But that is joyful activity which is in accordance with 
our nature, which we do not feel as a limitation, and 
consequently not as a constraint. And the happiest, 
the most blissful activity is that which is productive. 
To read is delightful, reading is passive activity ; but 
to produce what is worthy to be read is more delight- 
ful still. It is more blessed to give than to receive. 
Hence this attribute of the species — productive ac- 
tivity — is assigned to God ; that is, realized and made 
objective as divine activity. But every special deter- 



THE CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD. 279 

mination, every mode of activity is abstracted, and 
only the fundamental determination, which however is 
essentially human, namely, production of what is ex- 
ternal to self, is retained. God has not, like man, 
produced something in particular, this or that, but all 
things ; his activity is absolutely universal, unlimited. 
Hence it is self-evident, it is a necessary consequence, 
that the mode in which God has produced the All is 
incomprehensible, because this activity is no mode of 
activity, because the question concerning the how is 
here an absurdity, a question which is excluded by 
the fundamental idea of unlimited activity. Every 
special activity produces its effects in a special man- 
ner, because there the activity itself is a determinate 
mode of activity ; and thence necessarily arises the 
question : How did it produce this ? But the answer 
to the question : How did God make the world ? has 
necessarily a negative issue, because the world-cre- 
ating activity in itself negatives every determinate 
activity, such as would alone warrant the question, 
every mode of activity connected with a determinate 
medium, i. e., with matter. This question illegitimately 
foists in between the subject or producing activity, 
and the object or thing produced, an irrelevant, nay, 
an excluded intermediate idea, namely, the idea of 
particular, individual existence. The activity in ques- 
tion has relation only to the collective — the All, the 
world ; God created all things, not some particular 
thing ; the indefinite whole, the All, as it is embraced 
by the imagination, — not the determinate, the par- 
ticular, as, in its particularity, it presents itself to 
the senses, and as, in its totality as the universe, 
it presents itself to the reason. Every particular thing 
arises in a natural way ; it is something determin- 
ate, and as such it has — what it is only tautology to 
state — a determinate cause. It was not God, but 
carbon, that produced the diamond ; a given salt 
owes its origin, not to God, but to the combination 
of a particular acid with a particular base. God 



280 THE ESSENCE OF CHEISTIANITY. 

only created all things together without distinction. 
It is true that according to the religious conception, 
God has created every individual thing, as included in 
the whole ; — but only indirectly : for he has not pro- 
duced the individual in an individual manner, the deter- 
minate in a determinate manner ; otherwise he would 
be a determinate or conditioned being. It is certainly 
incomprehensible how out of this general, indetermi- 
nate or unconditioned activity the particular, the deter- 
minate, can have proceeded ; but it is so only because I 
here intrude the object of sensational, natural experi- 
ence, because I assign to the divine activity another 
object than that which is proper to it. Religion has no 
physical conception of the world ; it has no interest in 
a natural explanation, which can never be given but 
with a mode of origin. Origin is a theoretical, natu- 
ral-philosophical idea. The heathen philosophers busied 
themselves with the origin of things. But the Chris- 
tian religious consciousness abhorred this idea as 
heathen, irreligious, and substituted the practical or 
subjective idea of Creation, which is nothing else than 
a prohibition to conceive things as having arisen in a 
natural way. an interdict on all physical science. The 
religious consciousness connects the world immediate- 
ly with God ; it derives all from God, because nothing 
is an object to him in its particularity and reality, 
nothing is to him as it presents itself to our reason. 
All proceeds from God : — that is enough, that perfect- 
ly satisfies the religious consciousness. The question. 
how did God create ? is an indirect doubt that he did 
create the world. It was this question which brought 
man to atheism, materialism, naturalism. To him who 
asks it, the world is already an object of theory, of 
phv.-ical Bcience, i. e., it is an object to him in its 
reality, in its determinate constituents. It is this 
mode of viewing the world which contradicts the 
idea of unconditioned, immaterial activity: and this 
contradiction leads to the negation of the fundamental 
idea — the creation. 



THE CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OP GOD. 281 

The creation by omnipotence is in its place, is a 
truth, only when all the phenomena of the world are 
derived from God. It becomes, as has been already ob- 
served, a myth of past ages where physical science 
introduces itself, where man makes the determinate 
causes, the hoiv of phenomena, the object of ivestiga- 
tion. To the religious consciousness, therefore, the 
creation is nothing incomprehensible, i.e., unsatisfying; 
at least it is so only in moments of irreligiousness, of 
doubt, when the mind turns away from God to actual 
things ; but it is highly unsatisfactory to reflection, to 
theology, which looks with one eye at heaven and 
with the other at earth. As the cause, so is the effect. 
A flute sends forth the tones of a flute, not those of a 
bassoon or a trumpet. If thou hearest the tones of a 
bassoon, but hast never before seen or heard any wind- 
instrument but the flute, it will certainly be incon- 
ceivable to thee how such tones can come out of a flute. 
Thus it is here : — the comparison is only so far inap- 
propriate as the flute itself is a particular instrument. 
But imagine, if it be possible, an absolutely universal 
instrument, which united in itself all instruments, 
without being itself a particular one ; thou wilt then 
see that it is an absurd contradiction to desire a par- 
ticular tone which only belongs to a particular instru- 
ment, from an instrument which thou hast divested 
precisely of that which is characteristic in all particu- 
lar instruments. 

But there also lies at the foundation of this dogma 
of incomprehensibility the design of keeping the di- 
vine activity apart from the human, of doing away 
with their similarity, or rather their essential identity, 
so as to make the divine activity essentially different 
from the human. This distinction between the divine 
and human activity is "nothing." God makes, — he 
makes something external to himself, as man does. 
Making is a genuine human idea. Nature gives birth 
to, brings forth ; man makes. Making is an act which 
I can omit, a designed, premeditated, external act ; — 



282 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

an act in which my inmost being is not immediately 
concerned, in which, while active. I am not at the same 
time passive, carried away by an internal impulse. 
On the contrary, an activity which is identical with 
my being is not indifferent, is necessary to me, as for 
example intellectual production, which is an inward 
necessity to me ; and for that reason lays a deep hold 
on me, affects me pathologically. Intellectual works 
are not made, — making is only the external activity 
applied to them ; — they arise in us. To make is an 
indifferent, therefore a free, i. e*. optional activity. 
Thus far then — that He makes — God is entirely at one 
with man, not at all distinguished from him ; but an 
especial emphasis is laid on this, that his making is 
free, arbitrary, at his pleasure. " It has pleased God" 
to create a world. Thus man here deifies satisfaction 
in self-pleasing, in caprice and groundless arbitrari- 
ness. The fundamentally human character of the 
divine activity is by the idea of arbitrariness degraded 
into a human manisfestation of a low kind ; God, from 
a mirror of human nature is converted into a mirror 
of human vanity and self-complacency. 

And now all at once the harmony is changed into 
discord ; man, hitherto at one with himself, becomes 
divided : — God makes out of nothing : he creates, — to 
make out of nothing is to create, — this is the distinc- 
tion. The positive condition — the act of making — is 
a human one ; but inasmuch as all that is determinate 
in this conception is immediately denied, reflection 
steps in and makes the divine activity not human. 
But with this negation, comprehension, understanding 
comes to a stand ; there remains only a negative, empty 
notion, because conceivability is already exhausted, 
i. e., the distinction between the divine and human 
determination is in truth a nothing, a nihil negativum 
of the understanding. The naive confession of this is 
made in the supposition of u nothing" as an object. 

God is Love, but not human love; Understanding, 
but not human understanding, — no ! an essentially 



THE CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD. 283 

different understanding. But wherein consists this 
difference ? I cannot conceive an understanding which 
acts under other forms than those of our own under- 
standing ; I cannot halve or quarter understanding so 
as to have several understandings ; I can only conceive 
one and the same understanding. It is true that I can 
and even must conceive understanding in itself, i. e., 
free from the limits of my individuality ; but in so 
doing I only release it from limitations essentially 
foreign to it ; I do not set aside its essential determi- 
nations or forms. Religious reflection, on the con- 
trary, denies precisely that determination or quality 
which makes a thing what it is. Only that in which 
the divine understanding is identical with the human, 
is something, is understanding, is a real idea ; while 
that which is supposed to make it another, yes, essen- 
tially another than the human, is objectively nothing, 
subjectively a mere chimera. 

In all other definitions of the Divine Being the 
" nothing ;; which constitutes the distinction is hidden ; 
in the creation, on the contrary, it is an evident, de- 
clared, objective nothing ; — and is therefore the offi- 
cial, notorious nothing of theology in distinction from 
anthropology. 

But the fundamental determination "by which man 
makes his own nature a foreign, incomprehensible na- 
ture, is the idea of individuality or — what is only a 
more abstract expression — personality. The idea of 
the existence of God first realizes itself in the idea of 
revelation, and the idea of revelation first realizes 
itself in the idea of personality. God is a personal 
being : — this is the spell, which charms the ideal into 
the real, the subjective into the objective. All predi- 
cates, all attributes of the divine being are fundamen- 
tally human ; but as attributes of a personal being, 
and therefore of a being distinct from man and exist- 
ing independently, they appear immediately to be 
really other than human, yet so as that at the same 
time the essential identity always remains at the foun- 



284 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

dation. Hence reflection gives rise to the idea of so- 
called anthropomorphisms. Anthropomorphisms are 
resemblances between God and man. The attributes 
of the divine and of the human being are not indeed 
the same, but they are analogous. 

Thus personality is the antidote to Pantheism; i. e., 
by the idea of personality religious reflection expels 
from its thought the identity of the divine and human 
nature. The rude but characteristic expression of 
pantheism is : man is an effluence or a portion of the 
divine being ; the religious expression is : man is the 
image of God, or a being akin to God ; — for according 
to religion man does not spring from Nature, but is 
of divine race, of divine origin. But kinship is a 
vague, evasive expression. There are degrees of kin- 
ship, near and distant. What sort of kinship is in- 
tended ? For the relation of man to God, there is but 
one form of kinship which is appropriate, — the nearest, 
profoundest, most sacred that can be conceived, — the 
relation of the child to the father. According to this 
God is the Father of man, man the son, the child of 
God. Here is posited at once the self-subsistence of 
God and the dependence of man, and posited as an im- 
mediate object of feeling ; whereas in Pantheism the 
part appears just as self-subsistent as the whole, since 
this is represented as made up of its parts. Neverthe- 
less this distinction is only an appearance. The father 
is not a father without the child ; both together form 
a correlated being. In love man renounces his inde- 
pendence, and reduces himself to a part : — a self-humi- 
liation which is only compensated by the fact that the 
one whom he loves at the same time voluntarily be- 
comes a part also ; that they both submit to a higher 
power, the power of the spirit of family, the power of 
love. Thus there is here the same relation between 
God and man as in pan theism, save that in the one it 
is represented as a personal, patriarchal relation, in 
the other as an impersonal, general one, — save that 
pantheism expresses logically and therefore definitely, 



THE CONTRADICTION IN THE NATUBE OF GOD. 285 

directly, what religion invests with the imagination. 
The correlation or rather the identity of God and man 
is veiled in religion by representing both as persons 
or individuals, and God as a self-subsistent, independ- 
ent being apart from his paternity : — an independence 
which however is only apparent, for he who, like the 
God of religion, is a father from the depths of the 
heart, has his very life and being in his child. 

The reciprocal and profound relation of dependence 
between God as father and man as child, cannot be 
shaken by the distinction, that only Christ is the true, 
natural son of God, and that men are but his adopted 
sons ; so that it is only to Christ as the only-begotten 
Son, and by no means to men, that God stands in an 
essential relation of dependence. For this distinction 
is only a theological, i. e., an illusory one. God adopts 
only men, not brutes. The ground of adoption lies in 
the hitman nature. The man adopted by divine grace 
is only the man conscious of his divine nature and dig- 
nity. Moreover, the only-begotten Son himself is no- 
thing else than the idea of humanity, than man pre- 
occupied with himself, man hiding from himself and 
the world in God, — the heavenly man. The Logos is 
latent, tacit man ; man is the revealed, expressed Lo- 
gos. The Logos is only the prelude of man. That 
which applies to the Logos applies also to the nature 
of man.* But between God and the only-begotten 
Son there is no real distinction, — he who knows the 
Son knows the Father also, — and thus there is none 
between God and man. 

It is the same with the idea that man is the image 
of God. The image is here no dead, inanimate thing, 
but a living being. " Man is the image of God," means 
nothing more than that man is a being who resembles 

* " The closest union which Christ possessed with the Father, it is 

possible for me to win All that God gave to his only-begotten 

Son, he has given to me as perfectly as to him." — Predigten etzlicher 
Lehrer vor und zn Tanleri Zeiten. Hamburg, 1621, p. 14. " Between 
the only-begotten Son and the Soul there is no distinction." — lb. p. 68. 



286 THE ESSENCE OP CHRISTIANITY. 

God. Similarity between living beings rests on natural 
relationship. The idea of man being the image of 
God reduces itself therefore to kinship ; man is like 
God, because he is the child of God. Resemblance is 
only kinship presented to the senses ; from the former 
we infer the latter. 

But resemblance is just as deceptive, illusory, evasive 
an idea as kinship. It is only the idea of personality 
which does away with the identity of nature. Resem- 
blance is identity which will not admit itself to be 
identity, which hides itself behind a dim medium, 
behind the vapour of the imagination. If I disperse 
this vapour, I come to naked identity. The more 
similar beings are, the less are they to be distinguish- 
ed ; if I know the one, I know the other. It is true 
that resemblance has its degrees. But also the resem- 
blance between God and man has its degrees. The 
good, pious man is more like God than the man whose 
resemblance to Him is founded only on the nature of 
man in general. And even with the pious man there 
is a highest degree of resemblance to be supposed, 
though this may not be obtained here below, but only 
in the future life. But that which man is to become, 
belongs already to him, at least so far as possibility is 
concerned. The highest degree of resemblance is that 
where there is no further distinction between two indi- 
viduals or beings than that they are two. The essential 
qualities, those by which we distinguish things from 
each other, are the same in both. Hence I cannot 
distinguish them in thought, by the Reason. — for this 
all data are wanting : — I can only distinguish them by 
figuring them as visible in my imagination or by 
actually seeing them. If my eyes do not say — there 
are really two separately existent beings, my reason 
will take both for one and the same being. Nay, even 
my eyes may confound the one with the other. Things 
are capable of being confounded with each other which 
are distinguishable by the sense and not by the reason, 
or rather which arc different only as to existence, not 



THE CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURB OF GOD. 287 

as to essence. Persons altogether alike have an extra- 
ordinary attraction not only for each other, but for 
the imagination. Resemblance gives occasion to all 
kinds of mystifications and illusions, because it is 
itself only aa illusion ; my eyes mock my reason, for 
which the idea of an independent existence is always 
allied to the idea of a determinate difference. 

Religion is the mind's light, the rays of which are 
broken by the medium of the imagination and the feel- 
ings, so as to make the same being appear a double one. 
Resemblance is to the Reason identity, which in the 
realm of reality is divided or broken up by immediate 
sensational impressions, in the sphere of religion by 
the illusions of the imagination ; in short, that which 
is identical to the reason is made separate by the idea 
of individuality or personality. I can discover no 
distinction between father and child, archetype and 
image, God and man, if I do not introduce the idea of 
personality. Resemblance is here the external guise 
of identity ; — the identity which reason, the sense of 
truth, affirms, but which the imagination denies ; the 
identity which allows an appearance of distinction to 
remain, — a mere phantasm, which says neither directly 
yes, nor directly no. 



288 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SPECULATIVE 
DOCTRINE OF GOD. 



The personality of God is thus the means by which 
man converts the qualities of his own nature into the 
qualities of another being, — of a being external to him- 
self. The personality of God is nothing else than the 
projected personality of man. 

On this process of projecting self outwards rests also 
the Hegelian speculative doctrine, according to which 
marts consciousness of God is the ^/^-consciousness of 
God. God is thought, cognized by us. According to 
speculation, God, in being thought by us, thinks him- 
self or is conscious of himself ; speculation identifies 
the two sides which religion separates. In this it is 
far deeper than religion, for the fact of God being 
thought is not like the fact of an external object being 
thought. God is an inward, spiritual being ; thinking, 
consciousness, is an inward, spiritual act ; to think 
God is therefore to affirm what God is, to establish 
the being of God as an act. That God is thought, 
cognized, is essential ; that this tree is thought, is to 
the tree accidental, unessential. God is an indispen- 
sable thought, a necessity of thought. But how is it 
possible that this necessity should simply express the 
subjective, and not the objective also ? — how is it pos- 
sible that God — if he is to exist for us, to be an object 
to us — must necessarily be thought, if he is in himself 
like a block, indifferent whether he be thought, cognized 
or not? No ! it is not possible. We are necessitated 



SPECULATIVE DOCTRINE OF GOD. 289 

to regard the fact of God being thought by us, as his 
thinking himself, or his self-consciousness. 

Keligious objectivism has two passives, two modes 
in which God is thought. On the one hand, God is 
thought by us, on the other, he is thought by himself. 
God thinks himself, independently of his being thought 
by us : he has a self-consciousness distinct from, inde- 
pendent of, our consciousness. This is certainly con- 
sistent when once God is conceived as a real persona- 
lity ; for the real human person thinks himself, and is 
thought by another; my thinking of him is to him 
an indifferent, external fact. This is the last degree 
of anthropopathism. In order to make God free and 
independent of all that is human, he is regarded as 
a formal, real person, his thinking is confined within 
himself, and the fact of his being thought is excluded 
from him, and is represented as occurring in another 
being. This indifference or independence with re- 
spect to us, to our thought, is the attestation of a self- 
subsistent, L e., external, personal existence. It is 
true that religion also makes the fact of God being 
thought into the self-thinking of God ; but because 
this process goes forward behind its consciousness, since 
God is immediately presupposed as a self-existent per- 
sonal being, the religious consciousness only embraces 
the indifference of the two facts. 

Even religion, however, does not abide by this in- 
difference of the two sides. God creates in order to 
reveal himself : creation is the revelation of God. But 
for stones, plants, and animals there is no God, but 
only for man ; so that Nature exists for the sake of 
man, and man purely for the sake of God. God 
glorifies himself in man : man is the pride of God. 
God indeed knows himself even without man ; but 
so long as there is no other me, so long is he only 
a possible, conceptional person. First when a differ- 
ence from God, a non-divine is posited, is God con- 
scious of himself ; first when he knows what is not 
God, does he know what it is to be God, does he know 



290 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the bliss of his Godhead. First in the positing of what 
is other than himself, of the world, does God posit 
himself as God. Is God almighty without creation ? 
No ! Omnipotence first realizes, proves itself in crea- 
tion. What is a power, a property, which does not 
exhibit, attest itself ? What is a force which effects 
nothing ? a light that does not illuminate ? a wisdom 
which knows nothing, i. e., nothing real? And what is 
omnipotence, what all other divine attributes, if man 
does not exist? Man is nothing without God ; but also, 
God is nothing without man ;* for only in man is God 
an object as God ; only in man is he God. The various 
qualities of man first give difference, which is the 
ground of reality in God. The physical qualities of 
man make God a physical being — God the Father, 
who is the creator of Nature, i. e., the personified, an- 
thropomorphized essence of Nature ;t the intellectual 
qualities of man make God an intellectual being, the 
moral, a moral being. Human misery is the triumph 
of divine compassion ; sorrow for sin is the delight of 
the divine holiness. Life, fire, emotion comes into God 
only through man. With the stubborn sinner God is 
angry ; over the repentant sinner he rejoices. Man is 
the revealed God : in man the divine essence first real- 
izes and unfolds itself. In the creation of Nature God 
goes out of himself, he has relation to what is other 
than himself, but in man he returns into himself : — 
man knows God, because in him God finds and knows 
himself, feels himself as God. Where there is no 
pressure, no want, there is no feeling; — and feeling is 
alone real knowledge. Who can know compassion 
without having felt the want of it ? justice without the 

* "God <';in :t- little .lo without US as we "without him." — Predigten 
etzlicher Lehrer, fcc. \k L6, Sec also on this subject — Strings, Chriatl. 
Glaubi ru&< B, i. § 17, and the author's work entitled, P. Jiayle, pp. 104, 107. 

f " This temporal, transitory life in this world (■/. e. natural life) we 
have through God, who is the almighty Creator of heaven and earth. But 
the eternal untrau>itory life we have through the Passion and Resurrec- 
tion of <air Lord Jesus Christ Jesus Christ a Lord over that life," 

-Luther (Th. xvi. s. 4r><)). 



SPECULATIVE DOCTRINE OF GOD. 291 

experience of injustice? happiness without the experi- 
ence of distress ? Thou must feel what a thing is ; 
otherwise thou wilt never learn to know it. It is in 
man that the divine properties first become feelings, 
i. e., man is the self-feeling of God ; — and the feeling 
of God is the real God ; for the qualities of God are 
indeed only real qualities, realities, as felt by man, — 
as feelings. If the experience of human misery were 
outside of God, in a being personally separate from 
him, compassion also would not be in God, and we 
should hence have again the Being destitute of quali- 
ties, or more correctly the nothing, which God was be- 
fore man or without man. For example : — Whether 
I be a good or sympathetic being — for that alone is 
good which gives, imparts itself, bonum est, communi- 
cativum sui,> — is unknown to me before the opportunity 
presents itself of showing goodness to another being. 
Only in the act of imparting do I experience the hap- 
piness of beneficence, the joy of generosity, of libera- 
lity. But is this joy apart from the joy of the re- 
cipient? No ; I rejoice because he rejoices. I feel the 
wretchedness of another, I suffer with him ; in allevi- 
ating his wretchedness I alleviate my own ; — sympathy 
with suffering is itself suffering. The joyful feeling 
of the giver is only the reflex, the self-consciousness 
of the joy in the receiver. Their joy is a common 
feeling, which accordingly makes itself visible in the 
union of hands, of lips. So it is here. Just as the 
feeling of human misery is human, so the feeling of 
divine compassion is human. It is only a sense of the 
poverty of finiteness that gives a sense of the bliss of 
infiniteness. Where the one is not, the other is not. 
The two are inseparable, — inseparable the feeling of 
God as God, and the feeling of man as man, insepar- 
able the knowledge of man and the self-knowledge of 
God. God is a Self only in the human self, — only in 
the human power of discrimination, in the principle of 
difference that lies in the human being. Thus com- 
passion is only felt as a me, a self, a force, i. e., as 

n2 



292 THE ESSENCE OP CHRISTIANITY. 

something special, through its opposite. The opposite 
of God gives qualities to God, realizes him, makes him 
a Self. God is God, only through that which is not 
God. Herein we have also the mystery of Jacob 
Boehme's doctrine. It must only be borne in mind 
that Jacob Boehme, as a mystic and theologian, places 
outside of man the feelings in which the divine being 
first realizes himself, passes from nothing to something, 
to a qualitative being apart from the feelings of man 
(at least in imagination), — and that he makes them ob- 
jective in the form of natural qualities, but in such a 
way that these qualities still only represent the im- 
pressions made on his feelings. It will then be obvious 
that what the empirical religious consciousness first 
posits with the real creation of Nature and of man, 
the mystical consciousness places before the creation 
in the premundane God, in doing which, however, it 
does away with the reality of the creation. For if 
God has what is not-God, already in himself, he has 
no need first to create what is not-God in order to be 
God. The creation of the world is here a pure super- 
fluity, or rather an impossibility ; this God for very 
reality does not come to reality ; he is already in him- 
self the full and restless world. This is especially true 
of Schelling's doctrine of God, who though made up 
of innumerable " potences" is yet thoroughly impotent. 
Far more reasonable, therefore, is the empirical re- 
ligious consciousness, which makes God reveal, i. e., 
realize himself in real man, real nature, and according 
to which man is created purely for the praise and glory 
of God. That is to say, man is the mouth of God, 
which articulates and accentuates the divine qualities 
as human feelings. God wills that he be honoured, 
praised. Why ? because the passion of man for God 
18 the self-consciousness of God. Nevertheless, the re- 
ligious consciousness separates these two properly in- 
separable sides, since by means of the idea of person- 
ality it makes God and man independent existences. 
Now the Hegelian speculation identifies the two sides, 



SPECULATIVE DOCTRINE OF GOD. 293 

but so as to leave the old contradiction still at the 
foundation ; — it is therefore only the consistent carry- 
ing out, the completion of a religious truth. The 
learned mob was so blind in its hatred towards Hegel 
as not to perceive that his doctrine, at least in this 
relation, does not in fact contradict religion ; — that it 
contradicts it only in the same way as, in general, a 
developed, consequent process of thought contradicts 
an undeveloped, inconsequent, but nevertheless radi- 
cally identical conception. 

But if it is only in human feelings and wants that 
the divine " nothing " becomes something, obtains 
qualities, then the being of man is alone the real being 
of God, — man is the real God. And if in the con- 
sciousness which man has of God first arises the self- 
consciousness of God, then the human consciousness 
is, per se, the divine consciousness. Why then dost 
thou alienate man's consciousness from him, and make 
it the self-consciousness of a being distinct from man, 
of that which is an object to him? Why dost thou 
vindicate existence to God, to man only the conscious- 
ness of that existence ? God has his consciousness in 
man, and man his being in God? Man's knowledge 
of God is God's knowledge of himself? What a di- 
vorcing and contradiction ! The true statement is this : 
man's knowledge of God is man's knowledge of him- 
self, of his own nature. Only the unity of being and 
consciousness is truth. Where the consciousness of 
God is, there is the being of God, — in man, therefore ; 
in the being of God it is only thy own being which is 
an object to thee, and what presents itself before thy 
consciousness is simply what lies behind it. If the 
divine qualities are human, the human qualities are 
divine. 

Only when we abandon a philosophy of religion, or 
a theology, which is distinct from psychology and an- 
thropology, and recognise anthropology as itself theo- 
logy, do we attain to a true, self-satisfying identity of 
the divine and human being, the identity of the human 



294 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

being with itself. In every theory of the identity of 
the divine and human which is not true identity, unity 
of the human nature with itself, there still lies at the 
foundation a division, a separation into two, since the 
identity is immediately abolished, or rather is supposed 
to be abolished. Every theory of this kind is in con- 
tradiction with itself and with the understanding, — is 
a half measure — a thing of the imagination — a per- 
version, a distortion ; which, however, the more per- 
verted and false it is, all the more appears to be pro- 
found. 



THE CONTRADICTION IN THE TRINITY. 295 



CHAPTER XXIV. 
THE CONTRADICTION IN THE TRINITY. 



Religion gives reality or objectivity not only to the 
human or divine nature in general as a personal being; 
it further gives reality to the fundamental determina- 
tions or fundamental distinctions of that nature as 
persons. The Trinity is therefore originally nothing 
else than the sum of the essential fundamental distinc- 
tions which man perceives in the human nature. Ac- 
cording as the mode of conceiving this nature varies, 
so also the fundamental determinations on which the 
Trinity is founded vary. But these distinctions, per- 
ceived in one and the same human nature, are hypos- 
tasized as substances, as divine persons. And herein, 
namely, that these different determinations are in God 
hypostases, subjects, is supposed to lie the distinction 
between these determinations as they are in God, and 
as they exist in man, — in accordance with the law 
already enunciated, that only in the idea of personality 
does the human personality transfer and make objec- 
tive its own qualities. But the personality exists only 
in the imagination ; the fundamental determintions 
are therefore only for the imagination hypostases, 
persons ; for reason, for thought, they are mere rela- 
tions or determinations. The idea of the Trinity con- 
tains in itself the contradiction of polytheism and 
monotheism, of imagination and reason, of fiction and 
reality. Imagination gives the Trinity, reason the 
Unity of the persons. According to reason, the things 
distinguished are only distinctions ; according to ima- 
gination, the distinctions are things distinguished 



296 THE ESSENCE OP CHRISTIANITY. 

which therefore do away with the unity of the divine 
being. To the reason, the divine persons are phan- 
toms, to the imagination realities. The idea of the 
Trinity demands that man should think the opposite 
of what he imagines, and imagine the opposite of what 
he thinks, — that he should think phantoms realities.* 
There are three Persons, but they are not essenti- 
ally distinguished. Tres persona, but una essentia. 
So far the conception is a natural one. We can con- 
ceive three and even more persons, identical in essence. 
Thus we men are distinguished from one another by 
personal differences, but in the main, in essence, in 
humanity, we are one. And this indentification is 
made not only by the speculative understanding, but 
even by feeling. A given individual is a man as we 
are ; punctum satis : in this feeling all distinctions 
vanish, — whether he be rich or poor, clever or stupid, 
culpable or innocent. The feeling of compassion, 
sympathy, is therefore a substantial, essential, specu- 
lative feeling. But the three or more human persons 
exist apart from each other, have a separate existence, 
even when they verify and confirm the unity of their 
nature by fervent love. They together constitute, 
through love, a single moral personality, but each has 
a physical existence for himself. Though they may be 
reciprocally absorbed in each other, may be unable to 
dispense with each other, they have yet always a form- 
ally independent existence. Independent existence, 
existence apart from others, is the essential character- 

* It is curious to observe how the speculative religious philosophy 
undertakes the defence of the Trinity against the godless understanding, 
and yet, by doing away with the personal substances, and explaining the 
relation of Father and Son as merely an inadequate image borrowed from 
organic life, robs the Trinity of its very heart and soul. Truly, if the 
cabalistic artifices which the speculative religions philosophy applies in 
the service of the absolute religion were admissible in favour of finite re- 
ligions, it would not be difficult to squeeze the Pandora's box of Christian 
dogmatics out of the horns of the Egyptian Apis. Nothing further 
would be needed for this purpose than the ominous distinction of tho 
understanding from the speculative reason, — a distinction which is adapt- 
ed to the justification of every absurdity. 



THE CONTRADICTION IN THE TRINITY. 297 

istic of a person, of a substance. It is otherwise in 
God, and necessarily so ; for while his personality is 
the same as that of man, it is held to be the same with 
a difference, on the ground simply of this postulate ; 
there mast be a difference. The three Persons in 
God have no existence out of each other, else there 
would meet us in the heaven of Christian dogmatics 
not indeed many gods, as in Olympus, but at least 
three divine Persons in an individual form, three 
Gods. The gods of Olympus were real persons, for 
they existed apart from each other, they had the cri- 
terion of real personality in their individuality, though 
they were one in essence, in divinity ; they had differ- 
ent personal attributes, but were each singly a god, 
alike in divinity, different as existing subjects or per- 
sons ; they were genuine divine personalities. The 
three Persons of the Christian Godhead, on the con- 
trary, are only imaginary, pretended persons, assuredly 
different from real persons, just because they are only 
phantasms, shadows of personalities, while, notwith- 
standing, they are assumed to be real persons. The 
essential characteristic of personal reality, the poly- 
theistic element, is excluded, denied as non-divine. 
But by this negation their personality becomes a mere 
phantasm. Only in the truth of the plural lies the 
truth of the Persons. The three persons of the 
Christian Godhead are not tres Dii, three Gods ; — at 
least they are not meant to be such ; — but anus Deus, 
one God. The three Persons end, not, ae might have 
been expected, in a plural, but in a singular ; they are 
not only Unum — the gods of Olympus are that — but 
Unas. Unity has here the significance not of essence 
only, but also of existence ; unity is the existential 
form of God. Three are one : the plural is a singular. 
God is a personal being consisting of three persons.* 

* The unity has not the significance of genus, not of unum but of unus, 

(See Augustine and Petrus Lomb. 1. i. dist. 19, c. 7, 8, 9.) Hi ergo 

tres, qui unum sunt propter ineffabilem conjunctionera deitatis qua ineffa- 

bilitar copulantur, unus Deus est." (Petrus L. 1. c. c. 6.) " How can 

N 3 



298 THE ESSENCE OP CHRISTIANITY. 

The three persons are thus only phantoms in the 
eyes of reason, for the conditions or modes under 
which alone their personality could be realized, are 
done away with by the command of monotheism. The 
unity gives the lie to the personality ; the self-sub- 
sistence of the persons is annnihilated in the self-sub- 
sistence of the unity, — they are mere relations. The 
Son is not without the Father, the Father not without 
the Son ; the Holy Spirit, who indeed spoils the sym- 
metry, expresses nothing but the relation of the two 
to each other. But the divine persons are distinguish- 
ed from each other only by that which constitutes 
their relation to each other. The essential in the 
Father as a person is that he is a Father, of the Son 
that he is a Son. What the Father is over and above 
his fatherhood, does not belong to his personality ; 
therein he is God, and as God identical with the Son 
as God. Therefore it is said : God the Father, God 
the Son, and God the Holy Ghost : — God is in all 
three alike. " There is one person of the Father, ano- 
ther of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. 
But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of 
the Holy Ghost, is all one f i. e., they are distinct 
persons, but without distinction of substance. The 
personality, therefore, arises purely in the relation 
of the Fatherhood ; L e., the idea of the person is 
here only a relative idea, the idea of a relation. 
Man as a father is dependent, he is essentially the 
correlative of the son ; lie is not a father without 
the son ; by fatherhood man reduces himself to a 
relative, dependent, impersonal being. It is before 
all things necessary not to allow oneself to be de- 
ceived by these relations as they exist in reality, in 
men. The human father is, over and above his pater- 
nity, an independent personal being ; he has at least 
a formal existence for himself, an existence apart from 
his son ; lie is not merely a father, with the exclusion 

. bring it^-lf into locord with this, or believe, that three is one and 
one is three ?" — Luther (T. x. iv. p. 13.) 



THE CONTRADICTION IN THE TRINITY, 299 

of all the other predicates of a real personal being. 
Fatherhood is a relation which the bad man can make 
quite an external one, not touching his personal being. 
But in God the Father, there is no distinction between 
God the Father and God the Son as God : the ab- 
stract fatherhood alone constitutes his personality, his 
distinction from the Son, whose personality likewise 
is founded only on the abstract sonship. 

But at the same time these relations, as has been 
said, are maintained to be not mere relations, but real 
persons, beings, substances. Thus the truth of the 
plural, the truth of polytheism is again affirmed,* and 
the truth of monotheism is denied, To require the 
reality of the persons is to require the unreality of the 
unity, and conversely, to require the reality of the 
unity is to require the unreality of the persons. Thus 
in the holy mystery of the Trinity, — that is to say, so 
far as it is supposed to represent a truth distinct from 
human nature, — all resolves itself into delusions, phan- 
tasms, contradictions, and sophisms.f 

* " Quia ergo pater Deus et films Deus et spiritus s. Deus cur non dicun- 
tur tres Dii? Ecce proposuit banc propositionem (Augustinus) attende quid 

respondeat Si autem dicerem : tres Deos, contradiceret scrip- 

tura dicens : Audi Israel : Deus tuus unus est. Ecce absolutio quses- 
tionis : quare potius dicamus tres personas quam tres Deos, quia soil. 
illud non contradicit scriptura," — Petrus L. (1. i. dist. 23, c. 3). How 
much did even Catholicism repose upon Holy Writ. 
- f A truly masterly presentation of the overwhelming contradictions in 
which the mystery of the Trinity involves the genuine religious senti- 
ment, is to be found in the work already cited — Theanthrvpos. Eine Reihe 
von Aphorismen — which expresses in the form of the religious sentiment 
what in the present work is expressed in the form of the reason ; and 
which is therefore especially to be recommended to women. 



300 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SACRAMENTS. 

As the objective essence of religion, the idea of God, 
resolves itself into mere contradictions, so also, on 
grounds easily understood, does its subjective essence. 

The subjective elements of religion are on the one 
hand Faith and Love ; on the other hand, so far as it 
presents itself externally in a cultus, the sacraments of 
Baptism and the Lord's Supper. The sacrament of 
Faith i3 Baptism, the sacrament of Love is the Lord's 
Supper. In strictness there are only two sacraments, 
as there are two subjective elements in religion, Faith 
and Love : for Hope is only faith in relation to the 
future ; so that there is the same logical impropriety 
in making it a distinct mental act as in making the 
Holy Ghost a distinct being. 

The identity of the sacraments with the specific es- 
sence of religion as hitherto developed is at once made 
evident, apart from other relations, by the fact that 
they have for their basis natural materials or things, 
to which, however, is attributed a significance and 
effect in contradiction with their nature. Thus the 
material of baptism is water, common, natural water, 
just as the material of religion in general is common, 
natural humanity. But as religion alienates our own 
nature from us, and represents it as not ours, so the 
water of baptism is regarded as quite other than com- 
mon water ; for it has not a physical but a hyperphy- 
sical power and significance : it is the Lavacrwm rc- 
generatioms, it purifies man from the stains of original 
sin, expels the inborn devil, and reconciles with God. 



THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SACRAMENTS. 301 

Thus it is natural water only in appearance ; in truth 
it is supernatural. In other words : the baptismal 
water has supernatural effects (and that which operates 
supernaturally is itself supernatural) only in idea, only 
in the imagination. 

And yet the material of Baptism is said to be natural 
water. Baptism has no validity and efficacy if it is 
not performed with water. Thus the natural quality 
of water has in itself value and significance, since the 
supernatural effect of baptism is associated in a super- 
natural manner with water only, and not with any 
other material. God, by means of his omnipotence, 
could have united the same effect to anything what- 
ever. But he does not ; he accomodates himself to 
natural qualities ; he chooses an element corresponding, 
analogous to his operation. Thus the natural is not 
altogether set aside ; on the contrary, there always 
remains a certain analogy with the natural, an appear- 
ance of naturalness. In like manner wine represents 
blood ; bread, flesh.- Even miracle is guided by anal- 
ogies ; water is changed into wine or blood, one spe- 
cies into another, with the retention of the indetermi- 
nate generic idea of liquidity. So it is here. Water 
is the purest, clearest of liquids ; in virtue of this its 
natural character it is the image of the spotless nature 
of the Divine Spirit. In short, water has a significance 
in itself, as water ; it is on account of its natural 
quality that it is consecrated and selected as the vehicle 
of the Holy Spirit. So far there lies at the founda- 
tion of Baptism a beautiful, profound natural signi- 
ficance. But, at the very same time, this beautiful 
meaning is lost again because water has a transcen- 
dental effect, — an effect which it has only through the 
supernatural power of the Holy Spirit, and not through 
itself. The natural quality becomes indifferent : he 
who makes wine out of water, can at will unite the 
effects of baptismal water with any material whatsoever. 

* " Sacramentum ejus rei similitudinem gerit, cujus signum est."— 
Petrus Lomb. (1. iv. dist. 1. c. 1). 



302 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Baptism cannot be understood without the idea of 
miracle. Baptism is itself a miracle. The same power 
which works miracles, and by means of them, as a proof 
of the divinity of Christ, turns Jews and Pasrans into 
Christians, — this same power has instituted baptism 
and operates in it. Christianity began with miracles, 
and it carries itself forward with miracles. 4 If the mir- 
aculous power of baptism is denied, miracles in general 
must be denied. The miracle-working water of bap- 
tism springs from the same source as the water which 
at the wedding at Cana in Galilee was turned into 
wine. 

The faith which is produced by miracle is not de- 
pendent on me, on my spontaneity, on freedom of 
judgment and conviction. A miracle which happens 
before my eyes 1 must believe, if I am not utterly ob- 
durate. Miracle compels me to believe in the divinity 
of the miracle-worker .* It is true that in some cases 
it presupposes faith, namely, where it appears in the 
light of a regard ; but with that exception it presup- 
poses not so much actual faith as a believing disposi- 
tion, willingness, submission, in opposition to an unbe- 
lieving, obdurate, and malignant disposition, like that 
of the Pharisees. The end of miracle is to prove that 
the miracle-worker is really that which he assumes to 
be. Faith based on miracle is the only thoroughly 
warranted, well-grounded, objective faith. The faith 
which is presupposed by miracle is only faith in a 
Messiah, a Christ in general; but the faith that this 
very man is Christ — and this is the main point — is 
first wrought by miracle as its consequence. This pre- 
supposition oven of an indeterminate faith is, however, 
by no means necessary. Multitudes first became be- 
lievers through miracles ; thus miracle was the cause 
of their faith. If then miracles do not contradict 

* In relation to the miracle-worker faith (confidence in God's aid) is 
certainly the amua efficient of the miracle. (See Matt. xvii. 20; Acts vi. 

8.) But in relation to the spectators of the miracle — and it is they who 
are in question here — miracle is the causa efficient of faith. 



THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SACRAMENTS. 303 

Christianity,- — and how should they contradict it? — 
neither does the miraculous efficacy of baptism contra- 
dict it. On the contrary, if baptism is to have a 
Christian significance it must of necessity have a super- 
naturalistic one. Paul was converted by a sudden 
miraculous appearance, when he was still full of hatred 
to the Christians. Christianity took him by violence. 
It is in vain to allege that with another than Paul this 
appearance would not have had the same consequences, 
and that therefore the effect of it must still be attri- 
buted to Paul. For if the same appearance had been 
vouchsafed to others, they would assuredly have become 
as thoroughly Christian as Paul. Is not divine grace 
omnipotent? The unbelief and non-convertibility of 
the Pharisees is no counter-argument ; for from them 
grace was expressly withdrawn. The Messiah must 
necessarily, according to a divine decree, be betrayed, 
maltreated and crucified. For this purpose there must 
be individuals who should maltreat and crucify him : 
and hence it was a prior necessity that the divine grace 
should be withdrawn from those individuals. It was 
not indeed totally withdrawn from them, but this was 
only in order to aggravate their guilt, and by no means 
with the earnest will to convert them. How would it 
be possible to resist the will of God, supposing of course 
that it was his real will, not a more velleity ? Paul 
himself represents his conversion as a work of divine 
grace thoroughly unmerited on his part ;* and quite 
correctly. Not to resist divine grace, i. e., to accept 
divine grace, to allow it to work upon one, is already 
something good, and consequently is an effect of the 
Holy Spirit. Nothing is more perverse than the at- 
tempt to reconcile miracle with freedom of inquiry 
and thought, or grace with freedom of will. In re- 
ligion the nature of man is regarded as separate 
from man. The activity, the grace of God is the 

* " Here we see a miracle surpassing aU miracles, that Christ should 
have so mercifully converted his greatest enemy. " — Luther (T. xvi. 
p. 560). 



304 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

projected spontaneity of man. Free Will made ob- 
jective." 

It is the most flagrant inconsequence to adduce the 
experience that men are not sanctified, not converted 
by baptism, as an argument against its miraculous effi- 
cacy, as is done by rationalistic orthodox theologians ;t 
for all kinds of miracles, the objective power of prayer 7 
and in general all the supernatural truths of religion, 
also contradict experience. He who appeals to ex- 
perience renounces faith. Where experience is a 
datum, there religious faith and feeling have already 
vanished. The unbeliever denies the objective efficacy 
of prayer only because it contradicts experience ; the 
atheist goes yet farther. — he denies even the existence 
of God, because he does not find it in experience. In- 
ward experience creates no difficulty to him : for what 
thou experiencest in thyself of another existence, proves 
only that there is something in thee which thou thyself 
art not, which works upon thee independently of thy 
personal will and consciousness, without thy knowing 
what this mysterious something is. But faith is stronger 
than experience. The facts which contradict faith do 
not disturb it : it is happy in itself; it has eyes only 
for itself, to all else it is blind. 

It is true that religion, even on the stand-point of 
it3 mystical materialism, always requires the co-opera- 
tion of subjectivity, and therefore requires it in the 
sacraments ; but herein is exhibited its contradiction 
with itself. And this contradiction is particularly 

* Hence it i< greatly to the honour of Luther's understanding and 

• f truth that, particularly when writing against Erasmus, he nn- 

tionally denied the free will of man a.s opposed to divine grace. 

Free Win," says Luther, (mite correctly from the stand-point 

of religion, " ifl B divine title and name, which none ought to hear hut 

tty alone." (T. xix. j>. 28.) 

^ ExpCfitl • rtoited even from the old theologian.% whose 

faith WSJ an unroinpnunUing one, the admi»ion that the effects of hap- 
ti-ui are. at Least in this life, very limited. lfr BflptiamHI 11011 aufert omnes 

litotes trains vita-." — liezger. IheoL ScnoL T* iv. p. 251. See 

aLo Petrus L. 1. iv. (list. 4, c. 4 ; 1. ii. dist. 32, c. 1, 



THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SACRAMENTS. 305 

glaring in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper ; for 
baptism is given to infants, — though even in them, as 
a condition of its efficacy, the co-oper.ation of subjec- 
tivity is insisted on, but, singularly enough, is supplied 
in the faith of others, in the faith of the parents, or of 
their representatives, or of the church in general.* 

The object in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper is 
the body of Christ, — a real body ; but the necessary 
predicates of reality are wanting to it. Here we have 
again, in an example presented to the senses, what we 
have found in the nature of religion in general. The 
object or subject in the religious syntax is always a 
real human or natural subject or predicate; but the 
closer definition, the essential predicate of this pre- 
dicate is denied. The subject is sensuous, but the pre- 
dicate is not sensuous, i. e., is contradictory to the 
subject. I distinguish a real body from an imaginary 
one only by this, that the former produces corporeal 
effects, involuntary effects, upon me. If therefore the 
bread be the real body of God, the partaking of it 
must produce in me immediate, involuntarily sancti- 
fying effects ; I need to make no special preparation, 
to bring with me no holy disposition. If I eat an apple, 
the apple of itself gives rise to the taste of apple. At 
the utmost I need nothing more than a healthy stomach 
to perceive that the apple is an apple. The Catholics 
require a state of fasting as a condition of partaking 
the Lord's Supper. This is enough. I take hold of 
the body with my lips, I crush it with my teeth, by 
my oesophagus it is carried into my stomach ; I assimi- 
late it corporeally, not spiritually. t Why are its 

* Even in the absurd fiction of the Lutherans, that "infants believe in 
baptism," the action of subjectivity reduces itself to the faith of others, 
since the faith of infants is " wrought by God through the intercession of 
the god-parents and their bringing up of the children in the faith of the 
Christian Church."— Luther (T. xiii. pp. 360, 361). "Thus the faith of 
another helps me to obtain a faith of my own." — lb. (T. xiv. p. 347a). 

f " This," says Luther, "is in summa our opinion, that in and with the 
bread, the body of Christ is truly eaten ; thus, that all which the bread 
undergoes and effects, the body of Christ undergoes and effects ; that it is 



306 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

effects not held to be corporeal ? Why should not this 
body, which is a corporeal, but at the same time hea- 
venly, supernatural substance, also bring forth in me 
corporeal and yet at the same time holy, supernatural 
effects ? If it is my disposition, my faith, which alone 
makes the divine body a means of sanctification to me, 
which transubstantiates the dry bread into pneumatic 
animal substance, why do I still need an external ob- 
ject? It is I myself who give rise to the effect of the 
body on me. and therefore to the reality of the body ; 
I am acted on by myself. Where is the objective truth 
and power ? He who partakes the Lord's Supper un- 
worthily has nothing further than the physical enjoy- 
ment of bread and wine. He who brings nothing, 
takes nothing away. The specific difference of this 
bread from common natural bread rests therefore only 
on the difference between the state of mind at the table 
of the Lord, and the state of mind at any other table. 
" He that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and 
drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the 
Lord's body."* But this mental state itself is depend- 
ent only on the significance which I give to this bread. 
If it has for me the significance not of bread, but of 
the body of Christ, then it has not the effect of common 
bread. In the significance attached to it lies its effect. 
I do not eat to satisfy hunger ; hence I consume only 
a small quantity. Thus to go no further than the 
quantity taken, which in every other act of taking food 
plays an essential part, the significance of common 
bread is externally set aside. 

divided, eaten and chewed with the teeth propter umonem sacramentalem." 
(Plank'.- Geach. der Kntst. des protest. Lehrbeg. B. viii. s. 3G9.) Else- 
where, it is true, Luther denies that the body of Christ, although it is 
partaken of corpor ea lly, " is chewed and digested like a piece of beef." 
(T. xix. p. 42!).) No wonder; tor that which is partaken of, is an object 
without objectivity, a body without corporeality, flesh without the qualities 
of flesh; "spiritual flesh," as Luther says, i. <-.. imaginary flesh. Beit 
observed further, that the Protestants also take the Lord's Supper fasting, 
but this i> mi tom with them, not a law. (See Luther, T. xviii. 

p. 200, 201.) 

* 1. Cor. xi. 29. 



THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SACRAMENTS. 307 

But this supernatural significance exists only in the 
imagination ; to the senses, the wine remains wine, the 
bread, bread. The Schoolmen therefore had recourse 
to the precious distinction of substance and accidents. 
All the accidents which constitute the nature of wine 
and bread are still there ; only that which is made up 
by these accidents, the subject, the substance, is want- 
ing, is changed into flesh and blood. But all the pro- 
perties together, whose combination forms this unity, 
are the substance itself. What are wine and bread if 
I take from them the properties which make them what 
they are ? Nothing. Flesh and blood have therefore 
no objective existence ; otherwise they must be an ob- 
ject to the unbelieving senses. On the contrary : the 
only valid witnesses of an objective existence — taste, 
smell, touch, sight — testify unanimously to the reality 
of the wine and bread, and nothing else. The wine 
and bread are in reality natural, but in imagination 
divine substances. 

Faith is the power of the imagination, which makes 
the real unreal, and the unreal real : in direct contra- 
diction with the truth of the senses, with the truth of 
reason. Faith denies what objective reason affirms, 
and affirms what it denies.* The mystery of the Lord's 
Supper is the mystery of faith :f — hence the partaking 

* " Videtur enim species vini et panis, et substantia panis et vim non 
creditur. Creditur autem substantia corporis et sanguinis Christi et tamen 
species non cernitur." — Bernardus (ed. Bas. 1552, pp. 189 — 191). 

f It is so in another relation not developed here, but which may be men- 
tioned in a note : namely, the following. In religion, in faith, man is an 
object to himself as the object, i. e., the end or determining motive, of God. 
Man is occupied with himself in and through God. God is the means of 
human existence and happiness. This religious truth, embodied in a cul- 
tus, in a sensuous form, is the Lord's Supper. In this sacrament man feeds 
upon God — the Creator of heaven and earth — as on material food ; by the 
act of eating and drinking he declares God to be a mere means of life to 
man. Here man is virtually supposed to be the God of God : hence the 
Lord's Supper is the highest self -enjoyment of human subjectivity. Even 
the Protestant — not indeed in words, but in truth — transforms God into 
an external thing since he subjects Him to himself as an object of sensa- 
tional enjoyment. 



308 THE ESSENCE OP CHRISTIANITY. 

of it is the highest, the most rapturous, blissful act of 
the believing soul. The negation of objective truth 
which is not gratifying to feeling, the truth of reality, 
of the objective world and reason, — a negation which 
constitutes the essence of faith, — reaches its highest 
point in the Lord's Supper ; for faith here denies an 
immediately present, evident, indubitable object, main- 
taining that it is not what the reason and senses de- 
clare it to be, that it is only in appearance bread, but 
in reality flesh. The position of the Schoolmen, that 
according to the accidents it is bread, and according 
to the substance flesh, is merely the abstract, explana- 
tory, intellectual expression of what faith accepts and 
declares, and has therefore no other meaning than 
this : to the senses or to common perception it is bread, 
but in truth, flesh. Where therefore the imaginative 
tendency of faith has assumed such power over the 
senses and reason as to deny the most evident sensible 
truths, it is no wonder if believers can raise themselves 
to such a degree of exaltation as actually to see blood 
instead of wine. Such examples Catholicism has to 
show. Little is wanting in order to perceive extern- 
ally what faith and imagination hold to be real. 

So long as faith in the mystery of the Lord's Supper 
as a holy, nay the holiest, highest truth, governed man, 
so long was his governing principle the imagination. 
All criteria of reality and unreality, of unreason and 
reason, had disappeared : anything whatever that could 
be imagined passed for real posibility. Religion hal- 
lowed every contradiction of reason, of the nature of 
things. Do not ridicule the absurd questions of the 
Schoolmen! They were necessary consequences of 
faith. That which is only a matter of feeling had to 
be made a matter of reason, that which contradicts the 
understanding had to be made not to contradict it. 
Thia ^a.- the fundamental contradiction of scholasti- 
cism, whence all other contradictions followed of 

COUIX'. 

And it is of no particular importance whether I be- 



THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SACRAMENTS. 309 

lieve the Protestant or the Catholic doctrine of the 
Lord's Supper. The sole distinction is, that in Pro- 
testantism it is only on the tongue, in the act of par- 
taking, that flesh and blood are united in a thoroughly 
miraculous manner with bread and wine ; * while in 
Catholicism, it is before the act of partaking, by the 
power of the priest, — who however here acts only in 
the name of the Almighty, — that bread and wine are 
really transmuted into flesh and blood. The Protestant 
prudently avoids a definite explanation ; he does not 
lay himself open like the pious, uncritical simplicity 
of Catholicism, whose God, as an external object, can 
be devoured by a mouse ; he shuts up his God within 
himself, where he can no more be torn from him, and 
thus secures him as well from the power of accident as 
from that of ridicule ; yet, notwithstanding this, he 
just as much as the Catholic consumes real flesh and 
blood in the bread and wine. Slight indeed was the 
difference at first between Protestants and Catholics 
in the doctrine of the Lord's Supper ! Thus at Anspach 
there arose a controversy on the question — " whether 
the body of Christ enters the stomach, and is digested 
like other food ?"t 

But although the imaginative activity of faith makes 
the objective existence the mere appearance, and the 
emotional, imaginary existence the truth and reality ; 
still, in itself or in truth, that which is really objective 
is only the natural elements. Even the Host in the 
pyx of the Catholic priest is in itself only to faith a 
divine body, — this external thing, into which he tran- 
substantiates the divine being is only a thing of faith ; 
for even here the body is not visible, tangible, taste- 
able as a body. That is : the bread is only in its signi- 

* "Nostrates, prsesentiam realem con seer ationis effectum esse, ad- 
firmant ; idque ita, ut turn se exserat, cum usus legitimus accedit. Nee 
est quod regeras, Christum haec verba : hoc est corpus meum, protulisse, 
antequam discipuli ejus comederent, adeoque panem jam ante usum cor- 
pus Christi fuisse. " — Buddeus (1. c. 1. v. c. 1, §§ 13, 17). See, on the 
other hand, Concil. Trident. Sessio 13, cc. 3, 8, Can. 4. 

t Apologie Melancthon. Strobel. Nurnb. 1783, p. 127. 



310 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

ficance flesh. It is true that to faith this significance 
has the sense of actual existence ; — as, in general, in 
the ecstasy of fervid feeling that which signifies be- 
comes the thing signified ; — it is held not to signify, 
but to be flesh. But this state of being flesh is not 
that of real flesh ; it is a state of being which is only 
believed in, imagined, i. e., it has only the value, the 
quality, of a significance, a truth conveyed in a sym- 
bol.* A thing which has a special significance for me, 
is another thing in my imagination than in reality. The 
thing signifying is not itself that which is signified. 
What it is, is evident to the senses ; what it signifies, 
is only in my feelings, conception, imagination, — is 
only for me, not for others, is not objectively present. 
So here. When therefore Zwinglius said that the 
Lord's Supper has only a subjective significance, he 
said the same thing as his opponents ; only he disturbed 
the illusion of the religious imagination ; for that which 
'"is" in the Lord's Supper, is only an illusion of the 
imagination, but with the further illusion that it is not 
an illusion. Zwinglius only expressed simply, nakedly, 
prosaically, rationalistically, and therefore offensively, 
what the others declared mystically, indirectly, — inas- 
much as they confessedf that the effect of the Lord's 
Supper depends only on a worthy disposition or on 
faith ; i. e., that the bread and wine are the flesh and 
blood of the Lord, are the Lord himself, only for him 
for whom they have the supernatural significance of 
the divine body, for on this alone depends the worthy 
disposition, the religious emotion.:]: 

* "The fanatics however, believe that it is mere bread and wine, and 
it U assuredly SO as they believe; they have it so, and eat mere bread 
and wine.'' — Lather (T, xix. p. \'<V2). That is to say, if thou believest, 

representest to thyself, conoeivest, that the bread is not bread, but the 
body of Christ, it is not bread ; but if thou dost not believe so, it is not so. 
What it is in thy belief that it actually is. 

\ liven the ( latholics also. "Hujus sacrament] effectus, quern in anima 
operator digns sumentis, est adunatio hominis ad Christum." — Concil. 
Florent. de S. Euohar. 

X u If the body of Christ U in the bread and is eaten with faith, il 



THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SACRAMENTS. 311 

But if the Lord's Supper effects nothing, consequently 
is nothing, — for only that which produces effects, is, — 
without a certain state of mind, without faith, then in 
faith alone lies its reality ; the entire event goes for- 
ward in the feelings alone. If the idea that I here 
receive the real body of the Saviour acts on the reli- 
gious feelings, this idea itself arises from the feelings ; 
it produces devout sentiments, because it is itself a 
devout idea. Thus here also the religious subject is 
acted on by himself as if by another being, through 
the conception of an imaginary object. Therefore the 
process of the Lord's Supper can quite well, even with- 
out the intermediation of bread and wine, without any 
church ceremony, be accomplished in the imagination. 
There are innumerable devout poems, the sole theme 
of which is the blood of Christ. In these we have a 
genuinely poetical celebration of the Lord's Supper. 
In the lively representation of the suffering, bleeding 
Saviour, the soul identifies itself with him ; here the 
saint in poetic exaltation drinks the pure blood, un- 
mixed with any contradictory, material elements ; here 
there is no disturbing object between the idea of the 
blood and the blood itself. 

But though the Lord's Supper, or a sacrament in 
general, is nothing without a certain state of mind, 
without faith, nevertheless religion presents the sacra- 
ment at the same time as something in itself real, ex- 
ternal, distinct from the human being, so that in the 
religious consciousness the true thing, which is faith, 
1$ made only a collateral thing, a condition, and the 
imaginary thing becomes the principal thing. And 
the necessary, immanent consequences and effects of 
this religious materialism, of this subordination of the 
human to the supposed divine, of the subjective to the 
supposed objective, of truth to imagination, of morality 

strengthens the soul, in that the soul believes that it is the body of Christ 
which the month eats." — Luther (T. xix. p. 433 ; see also p. 205). " For 
what we believe that we receive, that we receive in truth." — lb. (T. xvii. 
p. 557). 



312 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

to religion, — the necessary consequences are supersti- 
tion and immorality : superstition, because a thing has 
attributed to it an effect which does not lie in its na- 
ture, because a thing is held up as not being what it 
in truth is, because a mere conception passes for ob- 
jective reality ; immorality, because necessarily, in 
feeling, the holiness of the action as such is separated 
from morality, the partaking of the sacrament, even 
apart from the state' f mind, becomes a holy and saving 
act. Such, at least, is the result in practice, which 
knows nothing of the sophistical distinctions of the- 
ology. In general : icherever religion places itself in 
contradiction with reason, it places itself also in contra- 
diction icith the moral sense. Only with the sense of 
truth coexists the sense of the right and good. De- 
pravity of understanding is always depravity of heart. 
He who deludes and cheats his understanding has 
not a veracious, honourable heart ; sophistry corrupts 
the whole man. And the doctrine of the Lord's Supper 
is sophistry. 

The Truth of the disposition, or of faith as a requi- 
site to communion, involves the Untruth of the bodily 
presence of God ; and again the Truth of the objective 
existence of the divine body involves the Untruth of 
the disposition. 



THE COOTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 313 

CHAPTER XXVI. 
THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 



The Sacraments are a sensible presentation of that 
contradiction of idealism and materialism, of subjec- 
tivism and objectivism, which belongs to the inmost 
nature of religion. But the sacraments are nothing 
without Faith and Love. Hence the contradiction in 
the sacraments carries us back to the primary contra- 
diction of Faith and Love. 

The essence of religion, its latent nature, is the 
identity of the divine being with the human ; but the 
form of religion, or its apparent, conscious nature, is 
the distinction between them. G-od is the human 
being ; but he presents himself to the religious con- 
sciousness as a distinct being. Now, that which re- 
veals the basis, the hidden essence of religion, is Love; 
that which constitutes its conscious form is Faith. 
Love identifies man with God and God with man, con- 
sequently it identifies man with man ; faith separates 
God from man, consequently it separates man from 
man, for God is nothing else than the idea of the 
species invested with a mystical form, — the separation 
of God from man is therefore the separation of man 
from man, the unloosing of the social bond. By 
faith religion places itself in contradiction with mora- 
lity, with reason, with the unsophisticated sense of 
truth in man ; by love, it opposes itself again to this 
contradiction. Faith isolates God, it makes him a par- 
ticular, distinct being : love universalizes ; it makes 
God a common being, the love of whom is one with 
the love of man. Faith produces in man an inward 

o 



314 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

disunion, a disunion with himself, and by consequence 
an outward disunion also ; but love heals the wounds 
which are made by faith in the heart of man. Faith 
makes belief in its God a law : loye is freedom, — it con- 
demns not eyen the atheist, because it is itself athe- 
istic, itself denies, if not theoretically, at least practi- 
cally, the existence of a particular, indiyidual God, 
opposed to man. Loye has God in itself: faith has 
God out of itself ; it estranges God from man, it makes 
him an external object. 

Faith, being inherently external, proceeds eyen to 
the adoption of outward fact as its object, and be- 
comes historical faith. It is therefore of the nature of 
faith that it can become a totally external confession; 
and that with mere faith, as such, superstitious, magical 
effects are associated.* The deyils belieye that God 
is. without ceasing to be deyils. Hence a distinction 
has been made between faith in God, and belief that 
there is a God.t But eyen with this bare belief in the 
existence of God, the assimilating power of loye is in- 
termingled ; — a power which by no means lies in the 
idea of faith as such, and in so far as it relates to exter- 
nal things. 

The only distinctions or judgments which are imma- 
nent to faith, which spring out of itself, are the dis- 
tinctions of right or genuine, and wrong or false faith; 
or in general, of belief and unbelief. Faith discrimi- 
nates thus : This is true, that is false. And it claims 
truth to itself alone. Faith has for its object a defi- 
nite, specific truth, which is necessarily united with 
negation. Faith is in its nature exclusiye. One thing 
alone is truth, one alone is God, one alone has the mo- 
nopoly of being the Son of God ; all else is nothing, 
error, delusion. Jehovah alone is the true God ; all 
other gods are yain idol-. 

Faith has in its mind something peculiar to itself; 
it rests on a peculiar revelation of God; it has not 

* Hence the mere name of Christ lias miraculous powers, 
f " Gott glauben und an Gntt c/luuben" 



THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 315 

come to its possessions in an ordinary way, that way 
which stands open to all men alike. What stands 
open to all is common, and for that reason cannot form 
a special object of faith. That God is the creator, all 
men could know from Nature ; but what this God is 
in person, can be known only by special grace, is the 
object of a special faith. And because he is only re- 
vealed in a peculiar manner, the object of this faith is 
himself a peculiar being. The God of the Christians 
is indeed the God of the heathens, but with a wide 
difference:— just such a difference as there is between 
me as I am to a friend, and me as I am to a stranger, 
who only knows me at a distance. God as he is an 
object, to the Christians is quite another than as he is 
an object to the heathens. The Christians know God 
personally, face to face. The heathens know only — 
and even this is too large an admission — "what," and 
not " who/ 7 God is ; for which reason they fell into 
idolatry. The identity of the heathens and Christians 
before God is therefore altogether vague ; what the 
heathens have in common with the Christians — if in- 
deed we consent to be so liberal as to admit anything 
in common between them — is that which is specifically 
Christian, not that which constitutes faith. In what- 
soever the Christians are Christians, therein they are 
distinguished from the heathens ;* and they are Chris- 
tians in virtue of their special knowledge of God; 
thus their mark of distinction is God. Speciality is 
the salt which first gives a flavour to the common 
being. What a being is in special, is the being itself; 
he alone knows me, who knows me in specie. Thus the 
special God, God as he is an object to the Christians, 
the personal God, is alone God. And this God is un- 
known to heathens, and to unbelievers in general, he 
does no exist for them. He is, indeed, said to exist 
for the heathens ; but mediately, on condition that 

* " If I wish to be a Christian, I must believe and do what other people 
do not believe or do." — Luther (T. xvi. p. 569). 

Q2 



316 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

they cease to be heathens, and become Christians. 
Faith makes man partial and narrow : it deprives him 
of the freedom and ability to estimate duly what is 
different from himself. Faith is imprisoned within 
itself. It is true that the philosophical, or, in general, 
any scientific theorist, also limits himself by a definite 
system. But theoretic limitation, however fettered, 
short-sighted and narrow-hearted it may be, has still 
a freer character than faith, because the domain of 
theory is in itself a free one, because here the ground 
of decision is the nature of things, argument, reason. 
But faith refers the decision to conscience and interest, 
to the instinctive desire of happiness ; for its object 
is a special, personal Being, urging himself on recog- 
nition, and making salvation dependent on that re- 
cognition. 

Faith gives man a peculiar sense of his own dignity 
and importance. The believer finds himself distin- 
guished above other men, exalted above the natural 
man ; he knows himself to be a person of distinction, 
in the possession of peculiar privileges ; believers are 
aristocrats, unbelievers plebeians. God is this dis- 
tinction and pre-eminence of believers above unbe- 
lievers personified.* Because faith represents man's 
own nature as that of another being, the believer does 
not contemplate his dignity immediately in himself, 
but in this supposed distinct person. The conscious- 
ness of his own pre-eminence presents itself as a con- 
sciousness of this person ; he has the sense of his own 
dignity in this divine personality. t As the servant 
feels himself honoured in the dignity of his master, 
nay, fancies himself greater than a free, independent 

* Celsus makes it a reproach to the Christians that they hoast : " Est 
Deus et post ilium nos " (Origenes adv. Cels. ed. Ila^schelius. Aug. 
Viud. 1005, p. 182.) 

t "I am proud and exalting on account of my blessedness and the 
forgiveness of my sins, but through what ? Through the glory and pride 
of another, namely, the Lord Christ." — Luther (T. ii. p. 344). "He 
that glorieth let him glory in the Lord." — 1 Cor. i. 81. 



THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 317 

man of lower rank than his master, so it is with the 
believer * He denies all merit in himself, merely that 
he may leave all merit to his Lord, because his own 
desire of honour is satisfied in the honour of his Lord. 
Faith is arrogant, but it is distinguished from natural 
arrogance in this, that it clothes its feeling of superi- 
ority, its pride, in the idea of another person, for 
whom the believer is an object of peculiar favour. 
This distinct person, however, is simply his own hidden 
self, his personified, contented desire of happiness : for 
he has no other qualities than these, that he is the bene- 
factor, the Redeemer, the Saviour, — qualities in which 
the believer has reference only to himself, to his own 
eternal salvation. In fact, we have here the charac- 
teristic principle of religion, that it changes that which 
is naturally active into the passive. The heathen ele- 
vates himself, the Christian feels himself elevated. 
The Christian converts into a matter of feeling, of 
receptivity, what to the heathen is a matter of spon- 
taneity. The humility of the believer is an inverted 
arrogance, — an arrogance none the less because it has 
not the appearance, the external characteristics of 
arrogance. He feels himself pre-eminent : this pre- 
eminence, however, is not a result of his activity, but 
a matter of grace ; he has been made pre-eminent ; he 
can do nothing towards it himself. He does not make 
himself the end of his own activity, but the end, the 
object of God. 

Faith is essentially determinate, specific. God ac- 
cording to the specific view taken of him by faith, is 
alone the true God. This Jesus, such as I conceive 
him, is the Christ, the true, sole profit, the only be- 
gotten Son of God. And this particular conception 
thou must believe, if thou wouldst not forfeit thy sal- 
vation. Faith is imperative. It is therefore neces- 
sary — it lies in the nature of faith — that it be fixed as 

* A military officer who had been adjutant of the Russian general 
Munnich said : " When I was his adjutant I felt myself greater than 
now that I command.' ' 



318 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

dogma. Dogma only gives a formula to what faith 
had already on its tongue or in its mind. That when 
once a fundamental dogma is established, it gives rise 
to more special questions, which must also be thrown 
into a dogmatic form, that hence there results a bur- 
densome multiplicity of dogmas. — this is certainly a 
fatal consequence, but does not do away with the , 
necessity that faith should fix itself in dogmas, in order 
that every one may know definitely what he must be- 
lieve and how he can win salvation. 

That which in the present day, even from the stand- 
point of believing Christianity, is rejected, is compas- 
sionated as an aberration, as a misinterpretation, or is 
even ridiculed, is purely a consequence of the inmost 
nature of faith. Faith is essentially illiberal, preju- 
diced ; for it is concerned not only with individual 
salvation, but with the honour of God. And just as we 
are solicitous as to whether we show due honour to a 
superior in rank, so it is with faith. The apostle Paul is 
absorbed in the glory, the honour, the merits of Christ. 
Dogmatic, exclusive, scrupulous particularity, lies in 
the nature of faith. In food and other matters, indif- 
ferent to faith, it is certainly liberal ; but by no means 
in relation to objects of faith. He who is not for 
Christ is against him ; that which is not christain is 
antichristian. But what is christian ? This must be 
absolutely determined, this cannot be free. If the 
articles of faith are set down in books which proceed 
from various authors, handed down in the form of inci- 
dental, mutually contradictory, occasional dicta, — 
then dogmatic demarcation and definition are even an 
external necessity. Christianity owes its perpetuation 
to the dogmatic formulas of the Church. 

It is only the believing unbelief of modern times 
which hides itself behind the Bible, and opposes the 
biblical dicta to dogmatic definitions, in order that it 
may set itself free from the limits of dogma by arbi- 
trary exegesis. But faith lias already disappeared, is 
become indifferent, wnen the determinate tenets of 



THE CONTRDICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 319 

faith are felt as limitations. It is only religious in- 
difference under the appearance of religion that makes 
the Bible, which, in its nature and origin is indefi- 
nite, a standard of faith, and under the pretext 
of believing only the essential, retains nothing which 
deserves the name of faith ; — for example, substituting 
for the distinctly characterized Son of God, held up 
by the Church, the vague negative definition of a Sin- 
less Man, who can claim to be the Son of God in a 
sense applicable to no other being, — in a word, of a 
man, whom one may not trust oneself to call either a 
man or a God. But that it is merely indifference 
which makes a hiding-place for itself behind the Bible, 
is evident from the fact that even what stands in the 
Bible, if it contradicts the stand-point of the present 
day, is regarded as not obligatory, or is even denied ; 
nay, actions which are essentially christian, which are 
the logical consequences of faith, such as the separation 
of believers from unbelievers, are now designated as 
unchristian. 

The Church was perfectly justified in adjudging 
damnation to heretics and unbelievers,* for this con- 
demnation is involved in the nature of faith. Faith 
at first appears to be only an unprejudiced separation 
of believers from unbelievers ; but this separation is 
a highly critical distinction. The believer has God 
for him, the unbeliever, against him ; — it is only as 
a possible believer that the unbeliever has God not 
against him ; — and therein precisely lies the ground 
of the requirement that he should leave the ranks of 
unbelief. But that which has God against it is worth- 
less, rejected, reprobate ; for that which has God 
against it is itself against God. To believe, is synony- 
mous with goodness ; not to believe, with wicked- 
ness. Faith, narrow and prejudiced, refers all unbe- 
lief to the moral disposition. In its view the unbe- 
liever is an enemy to Christ out of obduracy, out of 

* To faith, so long as it has any vital heat, any character, the heretic 
is always on a level with the unbeliever, with the atheist. 



320 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

wickedness.* Hence faith has fellowship with be- 
lievers only ; unbelievers it rejects. It is well-dis- 
posed towards believers, but ill-disposed towards un- 
believers. In faith there lies a malignant principle. 

It is owing to the egoism, the vanity, the self-com- 
placency of Christians, that they can see the motes in 
the faith of non-christian nations, but cannot perceive 
the beam in their own. It is only in the mode in 
which faith embodies itself that Christians differ from 
the followers of other religions. The distinction is 
founded only on climate or on natural temperament. 
A warlike or ardently sensuous people will naturally 
attest its distinctive religious character by deeds, by 
force of arms. But the nature of faith as such is ev- 
erywhere the same. It is essential to faith to con- 
demn, to anathematize. All blessings, all good it ac- 
cumulates on itself, on its God, as the lover on his 
beloved ; all curses, all hardship and evil it casts on 
unbelief. The believer is blessed, well-pleasing to 
God, a partaker of everlasting felicity ; the unbeliever 
is accursed, rejected of God and abjured by men : for 
what God rejects man must not receive, must not in- 
dulge ; — that would be a criticism of the divine judg- 
ment. The Turks exterminate unbelievers with fire 
and sword, the Christians with the flames of hell. 
But the fires of the other world blaze forth into this, to 
glare through the night of unbelief. As the believer 
already here below anticipates the joys of heaven, so 
the flames of the abyss must be seen to flash here as a 
foretaste of the awaiting hell, — at least in the mo- 
ments when faith attains its highest enthusiasm.f It 

* Already in the New Testament the idea of disobedience is associated 
with unbelief. M The cardinal wickedness is unbelief." — Luther (xiii. 
p. 647.) 

f God himself by no means entirely reserves the punishment of blas- 
phemers, of unbelivers, of heretics, for the future ; he often punishes thera 
in this life also, "for the benefit of Christendom and the strengthening 
of faith :" as, for example, the heretics Cerinthus and Arius. See Luther 
(T. xiv. p. 13.) 



THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 321 

is true that Christianity ordains no persecution of he- 
retics, still less conversion by force of arms. But so 
far as faith anathematizes, it necessarily generates 
hostile dispositions, — the dispositions out of which 
the persecution of heretics arises. To love the man 
who does not believe in Christ, is a sin against Christ, 
is to love the enemy of Christ.* That which God, 
which Christ does not love, man must not love ; his 
love would be a contradiction of the divine will, con- 
sequently a sin. God it is true, loves all men ; but 
only when and because they are Christians, or at least 
may be and desire to be such. To be a Christian is 
to be beloved by God ; not to be a Christian is to be 
hated by God, an object of the divine anger.t The 
Christian must therefore love only Christians- — others 
only as possible Christians ; he must only love what 
faith hallows and blesses. Faith is the baptism of 
love. Love to man as man is only natural love. 
Christian love is supernatural, glorified, sanctified 
love ; therefore it loves only what is Christian. The 
maxim, " Love your enemies/ 7 has reference only to 
personal enemies, not to public enemies, the enemies 
of God, the enemies of faith, unbelievers. He who 
loves the men whom Christ denies, does not believe 
Christ, denies his Lord and God. Faith abolishes 
the natural ties of humanity ; to universal, natural 
unity, it substitutes a particular unity. 

Let it not be objected to this, that it is said in the 
Bible, " Judge not, that ye be not judged f and that 
thus, as faith leaves to God the judgment, so it leaves 
to him the sentence of condemnation. This and other 
similar sayings have authority only as the private law 
of Christians, not as their public law ; belong only to 
ethics, not to dogmatics. It is an indication of indif- 

* " Si quis spiritum Dei habet, illius versiculi recordetur : Nonne qui 
oderunt te, Domine, oderam?" (Psal. cxxxix. 21.) Bernhardus, Epist. 
(193) ad magist. Yvonem Cardin. 

f " Qui Christum negat, negatur a Christo." — Cyprian (Epst E. 73, 
§ 18. Edit. Gersdorf.) 

03 



322 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

ference to faith, to introduce such savings into the re- 
join of dogma. The distinction between the unbe- 
liever and the man is a fruit of modern philanthrophv. 
To faith, the man is merged in the believer ; to it, 
the essential difference between man and the brute 
rests only on religious belief. Faith alone compre- 
hends in itself all virtues which can make man pleas- 
ing to God ; and God is the absolute measure, his 
pleasure the highest law : the believer is thus alone 
the legitimate, normal man. man as he ought to be, 
man as he is recognised by God. Wherever we find 
Christians making a distinction between the man and 
the believer, there the human mind has already sever- 
ed itself from faith ; there man has value in himself, 
independently of faith. Hence faith is true, unfeign- 
ed, only where the specific difference of faith operates 
in all its severity. If the edge of this difference is 
blunted, faith itself naturally becomes indifferent, 
effete. Faith is liberal only in things intrinsically 
indifferent. The liberalism of the apostle Paul pre- 
supposes the acceptance of the fundamental articles 
of faith. Where everything is made to depend on the 
fundamental articles of faith, there arises the distinc- 
tion between essential and non-essential belief. In 
the sphere of the non-essential there is no law. — there 
you are free. But obviously it is only on condition 
of your leaving the rights of faith intact, that faith 
allows you freedom. 

It is therefore an altogether false defence to say, 
that faith leaves judgment to God, It leaves to him 
only the moral judgment with respect to faith, only 
the judgment as to its moral character, as to whether 
the faith of Christiana be feigned or genuine. So far 
as elasSGS are concerned, faith knows already whom 
Christ will place on the right hand, and whom on the 
left ; in relation to the persona who compose the 
classes faith is uncertain ; — but that believers are 
heirs of the Eternal Kingdom is beyond all doubt. 
Apart from this, however, the God who distinguishes 



THE CONTRADICTION OP FAITH AND LOVE. 323 

between believers and unbelievers, the condemning 
and rewarding God, is nothing else than faith itself. 
What God condemns, faith condemns, and vice versa. 
Faith is a consuming fire to its opposite.* This fire 
of faith regarded objectively, is the anger of God, or 
what is the same thing, hell ; for hell evidently has its 
foundation in the anger of God. But this hell lies in 
faith itself, in its sentence of damnation. The flames 
of hell are only the flashings of the exterminating, 
vindictive glance which faith casts on unbelievers. 

Thus faith is essentially a spirit of partisanship. 
He who is not for Christ is against him.t Faith 
knows only friends or enemies, it understands no neu- 
trality ; it is preoccupied only with itself. Faith is 
essentially intolerant ; essentially, because with faith 
is always associated the illusion that its cause is the 
cause of God, its honour, his honour. The God of faith 
is nothing else than the objective nature of faith — faith 
become an object to itself. Hence in the religious 
consciousness also the cause of faith and the cause of 
God are identified. God himself is interested : the 
interest of faith is the nearest interest of God. "He 
who toucheth you," says the prophet Zachariah, 
" toucheth the apple of His eye. ;; J That which 
wounds faith, wounds God, that which denies faith, 
denies God himself. 

Faith knows no other distinction than that between 
the service of God and the service of idols. Faith 
alone gives honour to God ; unbelief withdraws from 
God that which is due to him. Unbelief is an injury 

* Thus the apostle Paul cursed " Elymas the sorcerer " with blindness, 
because he withstood the faith. — Acts xiii. 8 — 11. 

f Historically considered, this saying, as well as the others cited pp. 
3Si, 385, may be perfectly justified. But the Bible is not to be regarded 
as an historical or temporal, but as an eternal book. 

X " Tenerrimam partem humani corporis nominavit, ut apertissime in- 
teliigeremus, eum (Deum) tarn parva Sanctorum suorum contumelia 
hedi, quam parvi verberis tactu humani visus acies lseditur." — Salvianus, 
1. 8. de Grubern. Dei. 



324 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

to God, religious high treason. The heathens wor- 
ship demons ; their gods are devils. " I say that the 
things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to 
devils, and not to God : and I would not that ye should 
have fellowship with devils."* But the devil is the 
negation of God ; he hates God, wills that there should 
be no God. Thus faith is blind to what there is of 
goodness and truth lying at the foundation of heathen 
worship ; it sees in everything which does not do 
homage to its God, L e., to itself, a worship of idols, 
and in the worship of idols only the work of the devil. 
Faith must therefore, even in feeling, be only negative 
towards this negation of God : it is by inherent neces- 
sity intolerant towards its opposite, and in general 
towards whatever does not thoroughly accord with 
itself. Tolerance on its part would be intolerance to- 
wards God, who has the right to unconditional, un- 
divided sovereignty. Nothing ought to subsist, no- 
thing to exist, which does not acknowledge God, which 
does not acknowledge faith : — ''That at the name of 
Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and 
things on earth, and things under the earth ; and that 
every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, 
to the glory of the Fatheiv't Therefore faith postu- 
lates a future, a world where faith has no longer an 
opposite, or where at least this opposite exists only in 
order to enhance the self-complacency of triumphant 
faith. Hell sweetens the joys of happy believers. "The 
elect will come forth to behold the torments of the un- 
godly, and at this spectacle they will not be smitten 
with sorrow ; on the contrary, while they see the un- 
speakable sufferings of the ungodly, they, intoxicated 
with joy, will thank God for their own salvation.^ 

* 1 Cor. x. 20. 

f Phil. ii. 10, 11. ''When the name of Jesns Christ is heard, all that 
is unbelieving and ungodly in heaven or on earth ahull he terrified.'' — 
Luther (T- snl p. .'^l'j. "In moite pagani Christianas gloriatur, quia 
Christns ^lorificatur."— I>i\u- Bernardus. Sermo exhort.ad MilitesTempli. 

X Petrus L. 1. iv. di>t. .*><». c -\. But this passage ii by no means a de- 
claration of Peter Lombard himsel£ He is iar too modest, timid and dc- 



THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOYE. 325 

Faith is the opposite of love. Love recognises virtue 
even in sin, truth in error. It is only since the power 
of faith has been supplanted by the power of the na- 
tural unity of mankind, the power of reason, of human- 
ity, that truth has been seen even in polytheism, in 
idolatry generally, — or at least that there has been any 
attempt to explain on positive grounds what faith, in 
its bigotry, derives only from the devil. Hence love 
is reconcilable with reason alone, not with faith ; for 
as reason, so also love is free, universal, in its nature ; 
whereas faith is narrow-hearted, limited. Only where 
reason rules, does universal love rule ; reason is itself 
nothing else than universal love. It was faith, not 
love, not reason, which invented Hell. To love, Hell 
is a horror ; to reason, an absurdity. It would be a 
pitiable mistake to regard Hell as a mere aberration 
of faith, a false faith. Hell stands already in the 
Bible. Faith is everywhere like itself ; at least positive 
religious faith, faith in the sense in which it is here 
taken, and must be taken unless we would mix with it 
the elements of reason, of culture, — a mixture which 
indeed renders the character of faith unrecognisable. 

Thus if faith does not contradict Christianity, neither 
do those dispositions which result from faith, neither 
do the actions which result from those dispositions. 
Faith condemns, anathematizes ; all the actions, ail the 
dispositions, which contradict love, humanity, reason, 
accord with faith. All the horrors of Christian re- 
pendent on the authorities of Christianity, to have ventured to advance 
such a tenet on his own account. Xo ! This position is a universal decla- 
ration, a characteristic expression oi Christian, of beliving love. The doc- 
trine of some Fathers of the church, e. g. of Origen and Gregory of Xyssa, 
that the punishment of the damned would have an end, sprung not out of 
Christian or Church doctrine, but out of Platonism. Hence the doctrine 
that the punishment of hell is finite, was rejected not only by the Catholic 
but also by the Protestant church. (Augsb. Confess, art. 17.) A precious 
example of the exclusive, misanthropical narrowness of Christian love, is 
the passage cited from Buddeus by Strauss (Christl. Glaubensl. B. ii. 
s. 547), according to which not infants in general, but those of Christians 
exclusively, would have a share in the divine grace and blessings if they 
died unbaptized. 



326 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

ligious history, which our believers aver not to be due 
to Christianity, have truly arisen out of Christianity, 
because they have arisen out of faith. This repudia- 
tion of them is indeed a necessary consequence of faith ; 
for faith claims for itself only what is good, everything 
bad it casts on the shoulders of unbelief, or of misbe- 
lief, or of men in general. But this very denial of faith 
that it is itself to blame for the evil in Christianity, 
is a striking proof that it is really the originator of 
that evil, because it is a proof of the narrowness, par- 
tiality, and intolerance, which render it well-disposed 
only to itself, to its own adherents, but ill-disposed, 
unjust towards others. According to faith, the good 
which Christians do, is not done by the man, but by 
the Christian, by faith : but the evil which Christians 
do, is not done by the Christian, but by the man. The 
evil which faith has wrought in Christendom thus cor- 
responds to the nature of faith, — of faith as it is de- 
scribed in the oldest and most sacred records of Chris- 
tianity, of the Bible. ''If any man preach any other 
gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him 
be accursed,''- avti6s iUa fcrrw, Gal. i. 9. " Be ye not un- 
equally yoked together with unbelievers : for what 
fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? 
and what communion hath light with darkness ? And 
what concord hath Christ with Belial ? or what part 
hath he that believeth with an infidel ? And what agree- 
ment hath the temple of God with idols ? for ye are 
the temple of the living God ; as God hath said, I will 
dwell in them and walk in them ; and I will be their 
God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come 
out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the 
Lord, and touch not the unclean thing ; and I will 
receive you," 2 Cor. iv. 14 — IT. "When the Lord 
.Tesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty 
angels, in flaming lire taking vengeance on them that 
kn<rv not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our 

* "Fngite, abhomta hunc doctorem. " But why should I flee from 
him ? because the anger, i. e«, the enrse of God rests on his head. 



THE CONTRADICTION OP FAITH AND LOVE. 327 

Lord Jesus Christ : who shall be punished with ever- 
lasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and 
from the glory of his power ; when he shall come to 
be glorified in his saints, and admired in all them that 
believe," 2 Thess. i. 7—10. " Without faith it is im- 
possible to please God," Heb. xi. 6. " God so loved 
the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that 
whosoever believeth in him, should not perish, but 
have everlasting life," John iii. 16. " Every spirit 
that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh 
is of God : and every spirit that confesseth not that 
Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God : and 
this is the spirit of antichrist," 1 John iv. 2, 3. "Who 
is a liar, but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ ? 
He is antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son," 
1 John ii. 22. "Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth 
not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God : he that 
abideth in the doctrine of Christ, ho hath both the 
Father and the Son. If there come any unto you, and 
bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your 
house, neither bid him God speed : for he that biddeth 
him God speed, is partaker of his evil deeds," 2 John 
ix. 11. Thus speaks the apostle of love. But the 
love which he celebrates is only the brotherly love of 
Christians. "God is the Saviour of all men, specially 
of those that believe," 1 Tim. iv. 10. A fatal "spe- 
cially !" "Let us do good unto all men, especially unto 
them who are of the household of faith," Gal. vi. 10. 
An equally pregnant "especially !" " A man that is a 
heretic, after the first and second admonition reject ; 
knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, 
being condemned of himself,"* Titus iii. 10, 11. "He 
that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life : and he 
that believeth not the Son shall not see life ; but the 

* There necessarily results from this a sentiment which e. g. Cyprian 
expresses : " Si vero ubique hseretici nihil aliud quam adversarii et anti- 
christi nominantur, si vitandi et perversi et a semet ipsis damnati pro- 
nuntiantur ; quale est ut videantur damnandi a nobis non esse, quos 
constat apostolica contestation a semet ipsis damnatos esse." Epistol. 74. 
(Edit, cit.) 



328 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

wrath of God abideth on him, "* John iii. 36. " And 
whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that 
believe in me. it were better for him that a millstone 
were hanged about his neck, and that he were cast 
into the sea.' Mark ix. 42 ; Matt, xviii. 6. ''He that 
believeth and is baptized shall be saved ; but he that 
believeth not shall be damned," Mark xvi. 16. The 
distinction between faith as it is expressed in the Bible 
and faith as it has exhibited itself in later times, is 
only the distinction between the bud and the plant. 
In the bud I cannot so plainly see what is obvious in 
the matured plant : and yet the plant lay already in 
the bud. But that which is obvious, sophists of course 
will not condescend to recognise ; they confine them- 
selves to the distinction between explicit and im- 
plicit existence, — wilfully overlooking their essential 
identity. 

Faith necessarily passes into hatred, hatred into per- 
secution, where the power of faith meets with no con- 
tradiction, where it does not find itself in collision with 
a power foreign to faith, the power of love, of human- 
ity, of the sense of justice. Faith left to itself neces- 
sarily exalts itself above the laws of natural morality. 
The doctrine of faith is the doctrine of duty towards 
God, — the highest duty of faith. By how much God 
is higher than man. by so much higher are duties to 
God than duties towards man : and duties towards God 
necessarily come into collision with common human 
duties. God is not only believed in, conceived as the 
universal being, the Father of men, as Love : — such 
faith is the faith of love: — he is also represented as a 
personal being, a being by himself. And so far as 
God is regarded as separate from man, as an individual 
being, so far are duties to God separated from duties 

* TL< be. 56, M the parallel of which is cited John iii, 

itn completion and rectification in the immediately following 

v. 18: u He that believeth in him ifl not condemned; but he that believeth 

not II condemned already, be hath not believed in the name of 

the only begotten Son of God." 



THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 329 

to man : — faith is, in the religious sentiment, separated 
from morality, from love.* Let it not be replied that 
faith in God is faith in love, in goodness itself; and 
that thus faith is itself an expression of a morally 
good disposition. In the idea of personality, ethical 
definitions vanish ; they are only collateral things, 
mere accidents. The chief thing is the subject, the 
divine Ego. Love to God himself, since it is love to 
a personal being, is not a moral but a personal love. 
Innumerable devout hymns breathe nothing but love 
to the Lord ; but in this love there appears no spark 
of an exalted moral idea or disposition. 

Faith is the highest to itself, because its object is a 
divine personality. Hence it makes salvation depen- 
dent on itself, not on the fulfilment of common human 
duties. But that which has eternal salvation as its 
consequence, necessarily becomes in the mind of man 
the chief thing. As therefore inwardly morality is 
subordinate to faith, so it must also be outwardly, 
practically subordinate, nay sacrificed, to faith. It is 
inevitable that there should be actions in which faith 
exhibits itself in distinction from morality, or rather in 
contradiction with it ; — actions which are morally 
bad, but which according to faith are laudable, be- 
cause they have in view the advantage of faith. All 
salvation depends on faith : it follows that all again 
depends on the salvation of faith. If faith is endanger- 
ed, eternal salvation and the honour of God are en- 
dangered. Hence faith absolves from everything ; for, 

* Faith, it is true, is not " without good works," nay, according to 
Luther's declaration, it is as impossible to separate faith from works as 
to separate heat and light from fire. Nevertheless, and this is the main 
point, good works do not belong to the article of justification before God, 
i. e., men are justified and " saved without works, through faith alone." 
Faith is thus expressly distinguished from good works ; faith alone 
avails before God, not good works ; faith alone is the cause of salvation, 
not virtue : thus faith alone has substantial significance, virtue only 
accidental ; i. e., faith alone has religious signifioance, divine authority — 
and not morality. It is well known that many have gone so far as to 
maintain that good works are not necessary, but are even " injurious, 
obstructive to salvation." Quite correctly. 



330 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

strictly considered, it is the sole subjective good in 
man, as God is the sole good and positive being : — the 
highest commandment therefore is : Believe !* 

For the very reason that there is no natural, inhe- 
rent connexion between faith and the moral disposi- 
tion, that, on the contrary, it lies in the nature of faith 
that it is indifferent to moral duties,t that it sacrifices 
the love of man to the honour of God, — for this reason 
it is required that faith should have good works as its 
consequence, that it should prove itself by love. Faith 
destitute of love, or indifferent to love, contradicts the 
reason, the natural sense of right in man, moral feel- 
ing, on which love immediately urges itself as a law. 
Hence faith, in contradiction with its intrinsic charac- 
ter, has limits imposed on it by morality : a faith 
which effects nothing good, which does not attest itself 
by love, comes to be held as not a true and living 
faith. But this limitation does not arise out of faith 
itself. It is the power of love, a power independent of 
faith, which gives laws to it ; for moral character is 
here made the criterion of the genuineness of faith, 
the truth of faith is made dependent on the truth of 
ethics : — a relation which however is subversive of 
faith. 

Faith does indeed make man happy ; but thus much 

* •' Causa fidei .... exorbitantem et irregularem prorsus favorem 
habet et ab omni jure deviare, omnem captivare rationem, nee judiciis 
laicorum ratione corrupta utentium subjecta creditur. Etenim Causa 
ridei ad multa obligat, quae alias sunt voluntaria, multa, imo infinita 
remittit, quae alias praecepta ; quae alias valide gesta annullat, et contra 
quae alias nulla et irrita, fiunt valida .... ex jure canonico." — J. H. 
Boehmeri (Jus Eccles. lib. v. tit. vii. § 32. See also § 44 et seq.). 

f " Placetta de Fide, ii. Ill ne faut pas cherches dans la nature des 
choses memos la veritable cause de l'lnseparabilito de la foi et de la piet6 
II faut, si je ne me trompe, la chercher uniquement dans la volonte de 
[Hen .... Bene factt et nobisonm sentit, cum illam conjunctionem 
(I. >.. of sanctity or virtue with faith) a benifica Dei voluntate et dispo- 
sitione repctit ; nee id novum eel ejus inventnm, Bed cum antiquioribua 
Theoiogii aoetrifl oommune.' 1 — J. A. ErnestL (Vindicise arbitni divini 
Opnec thcol. ]). 2!'?.) "Si quia dixerit .... qni fidem sine charitato 
habet, Cfaristuutmn non ease, Anathema sit." — Concil Trid. (Sess. vi. de 
Justif. can. 28). 



THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 331 

is certain : it infuses into him no really moral dispo- 
sitions. If it ameliorate man, if it have moral dispo- 
sitions as its consequence, this proceeds solely from 
the inward conviction of the irreversible reality of 
morals : — a conviction independent of religious faith. 
It is morality alone, and by no means faith, that cries 
out in the conscience of the believer : thy faith is 
nothing, if it does not make thee good. It is not to 
be denied that the assurance of eternal salvation, the 
forgiveness of sins, the sense of favour and release 
from all punishment, inclines man to do good. The 
man who has this confidence possesses all things ; he 
is happy ;* he becomes indifferent to the good things 
of this world ; no envy, no avarice, no ambition, no 
sensual desire, can enslave him ; everything earthly 
vanishes in the prospect of heavenly grace and eternal 
bliss. But in him good works do not proceed from 
essentially virtuous dispositions. It is not love, not 
the object of love, man, the basis of all morality, which 
is the motive of his good works. No ! he does good 
not for the sake of goodness itself, not for the sake 
of man. but for the sake of God ; — out of gratitude 
to God, who has done all for him, and for whom 
therefore he must on his side do all that lies in his 
power. He forsakes sin, because it wounds God, his 
Saviour, his Benefactor. t The idea of virtue is here 
the idea of compensatory sacrifice. God has sacri- 
ficed himself for man; therefore man must sacrifice 
himself to God. The greater the sacrifice the better 
the deed. The more anything contradicts man 
and Nature, the greater the abnegation, the greater 
is the virtue. This merely negative idea of goodness 

* See on this subject Luther, e. g. T. xiv. p. 286. 

f " Therefore good works must follow faith, as an expression of thank- 
fulness to God." — Apol. der Augs. Conf. art. 3. " How can I make a 
return to thee for thy deeds of love in works ? yet it is something accept- 
able to thee, if I quench and tame the lusts of the flesh, that they may 
not anew inflame my heart with fresh sins." " If sin bestirs itself, I am 
i not overcome ; a glance at the cross of Jesus destroys its charms."— - 
Gesangbuch der Evangel. Brudergemeinen (Moravian Hymn-book). 



332 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

has been especially realized and developed by Catho- 
licism. Its highest moral idea is that of sacrifice ; 
hence the high significance attached to the denial of 
sexual love, — to virginity. Chastity, or rather vir- 
ginity, is the characteristic virtue of the Catholic 
faith. — for this reason, that it has no basis in Nature. 
It is the most fanatical, transcendental, fantastical 
virtue, the virtue of supranaturalistic faith ; — to faith, 
the highest virtue, but in itself no virtue at all. Thus 
faith makes that a virtue which intrinsically, substan- 
tially, is no virtue : it has therefore no sense of virtue ; 
it must necessarily depreciate true virtue because it 
so exalts a merely apparent virtue, because it is guided 
by no idea but that of the negation, the contradiction 
of human nature. 

But although the deeds opposed to love which mark 
Christian religious history, are in accordance with 
Christianity, and its antagonists are therefore right in 
imputing to it the horrible actions resulting from 
dogmatic creeds ; those deeds nevertheless at the same 
time contradict Christianity, because Christianity is 
not only a religion of faith, but of love also, — pledges 
us not only to faith, but to love. Uncharitable actions, 
hatred of heretics, at once accord and clash with 
Christianity? how is that possible ? Perfectly. Chris- 
tianity sanctions both the actions that spring out of 
love, and the actions that spring from faith without 
love. If Christianity had made love only its law, its 
adherents would be right, — the horrors of Christian 
religious history could not be imputed to it : if it had 
made faith only its law, the reproaches of its antago- 
nists would be unconditionally, unrestrictedly true. 
But Christianity has not made love free ; it has not 
raised itself to the height of accepting love as absolute. 
And it has not given this freedom, nay, cannot give it, 
because it is a religion, — and hence subjects love to 
the dominion of faith. Love is only the exoteric, 
faith the esoteric doctrine of Christianity ; love is only 
the morality, faith the religion of the Christian religion. 



THE CONTRADICTION OP FAITH AND LOYE. 333 

God is love. This is the sublimest dictum of Chris- 
tianity. But the contradiction of faith and love is 
contained in the very proposition. Love is only a 
predicate, God the subject. What, then, is this sub- 
ject in distinction from love ? And I must necessarily 
ask this question, make this distinction. The neces- 
sity of the distinction would be done away with only 
if it were said conversely : Love is God, love is the 
absolute being. Thus love would take the position of 
the substance. In the proposition " God is love, 77 the 
subject is the darkness in which faith shrouds itself ; 
the predicate is the light, which first illuminates the 
intrinsically dark subject. In the predicate I affirm 
love, in the subject faith. Love does not alone fill my 
soul : I leave a place open for my uncharitableness by 
thinking of God as a subject in distinction from the 
predicate. It is therefore inevitable that at one 
moment I lose the thought of love, at another the 
thought of God, that at one moment I sacrifice the 
personality of God to the divinity of love, at another 
the divinity of love to the personality of God. The 
history of Christianity has given sufficient proof of 
this contradiction. Catholicism, especially, has cele- 
brated Love as the essential deity with so much en- 
thusiasm, that to it the personality of God has been 
entirely lost in this love. But at the same time it has 
sacrificed love to the majesty of faith. Faith clings 
to the self-subsistence of God ; love does away with 
it. " God is love, 77 means, God is nothing by himself: 
he who loves, gives up his egoistical independence ; 
he makes what he loves indispensable, essential to his 
existence. But while Self is being sunk in the depths 
of love, the idea of the Person rises up again and dis- 
turbs the harmony of the divine and human nature 
which had been established by love. Faith advances 
with its pretensions, and allows only just so much to 
Love as belongs to a predicate in the ordinary sense. 
It does not permit love freely to unfold itself ; it 
makes love the abstract, and itself the concrete, the 



334 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

fact, the basis. The lore of faith is only a rhetorical 
figure, a poetical fiction of faith, — faith in ecstasy. If 
Faith comes to itself, Love is fled. 

This theoretic contradiction must necessarily mani- 
fest itself practically. Necessarily ; for in Christian- 
ity love is tainted by faith, it is not free, it is not 
apprehended truly. A love which is limited by faith 
is an untrue love.*. Love knows no law but itself; it 
is divine through itself; it needs not the sanction of 
faith ; it is its own basis. The love which is bound by 
faith, is a narrow-hearted, false love, contradicting the 
idea of love, i. <?., self-contradictory, — a love which has 
only a semblance of holiness, for it hides in itself the 
hatred that belongs to faith ; it is only benevolent so 
long as faith is not injured. Hence, in this contradic- 
tion with itself, in order to retain the semblance of 
love, it falls into the most diabolical sophisms, as we 
see in Augustine's apology for the persecution of heret- 
ics. Love is limited by faith ; hence it does not re- 
gard even the uncharitable actions which faith suggests 
as in contradiction with itself: it interprets the deeds 
of hatred which are committed for the sake of faith as 
deeds of love. And it necessarily falls into such contra- 
dictions, because the limitation of love by faith is it- 
self a contradiction. If it once is subjected to this 
limitation, it has given up its own judgment, its in- 
herent measure and criterion, its self-subsistence ; it is 
delivered up without power of resistance to the prompt- « 
ings of faith. 

Here we have again an example, that much which 
is not found in the letter of the Bible, is nevertheless 
there in principle. We find the same contradictions 
in the J>il)le as in Augustine, as in Catholicism gener- 
ally ; only that in the latter they are definitely declared, 
they arc developed into a conspicuous, and therefore 

* The only limitation which is not contradictory to the nature of love 
is the self-limitation oflove by reason, intelligence. The love which de- 
gpisesthe stringency, the law ol the intelligence, is theoretically false and 
practically noxious. 



THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 335 

revolting existence. The Bible curses through faith, 
blesses through love. But the only love it knows is 
a love founded on faith. Thus here already it is a love 
which curses, an unreliable love, a love which gives 
me no guarantee that it will not turn into hatred ; for 
if I do not acknowledge the articles of faith I am out 
of the sphere of love, a child of hell, an object of ana- 
thema, of the anger of God, to whom the existence of 
unbelievers is a vexation, a thorn in the eye. Christian 
love has not overcome hell, because it has not over- 
come faith. Love is in itself unbelieving, faith unlov- 
ing. And love is unbelieving because it knows no- 
thing more divine than itself, because it believes only 
in itself as absolute truth. 

Christian love is already signalized as a particular, 
limited love, by the very epithet, Christian. But love 
is in its nature universal. So long as Christian love 
does not renounce its qualification of Christian, does 
not make love, simply, its highest law, so long is it a 
love which is injurious to the sense of truth, for the 
very office of love is to abolish the distinction between 
Christianity and so-called heathenism ; — so long is it 
a love which by its particularity is in contradiction 
with the nature of love, an abnormal, loveless love, 
which has therefore long been justly an object of sar- 
casm. True love is sufficient to itself; it needs no 
special title, no authority. Love is the universal law 
of intelligence and Nature ; — it is nothing else than 
the realization of the unity of the species through the 
medium of moral sentiment. To found this love on 
the name of a person, is only possible by the associa- 
tion of superstitious ideas, either of a religious or spe- 
culative character. For with superstition is always 
associated particularism, and with particularism, fanat- 
icism. Love can only be founded on the unity of the 
species, the unity of intelligence — on the nature of 
mankind ; then only is it a well-grounded love, safe in 
its principle, guaranteed, free, for it is fed by the ori- 
ginal source of love, out of which the love of Christ 



336 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

himself arose. The love of Christ was itself a derived 
love. He loved us not out of himself, by virtue of his 
own authority, but by virtue of our common human 
nature. A love which is based on his person is a 
particular, exclusive love, which extends only so far 
as the acknowledgment of this person extends, a love 
which does not rest on the proper ground of love. 
Are we to love each other because Christ loved us ? 
Such love would be an affected, imitative love. Can 
we truly love each other only if we love Christ? Is 
Christ the cause of love ? Is he not rather the apostle 
of love ? Is not the ground of his love the unity of 
human nature? Shall I love Christ more than man- 
kind ? Is not such love a chimerical love ? Can I 
step beyond the idea of the species ? Can I love any- 
thing higher than humanity? What ennobled Christ 
was love ; whatever qualities he had, he held in fealty 
to love ; he was not the proprietor of love, as he is re- 
presented to be in all superstitious conceptions. The 
idea of love is an independent idea ; I do not first de- 
duce it from the life of Christ ; on the contrary, I 
revere that life only because I find it accordant with 
the law, the idea of love. 

This is already proved historically by the fact that 
the idea of love was by no means first introduced into 
the consciousness of mankind with and by Christianity, 
— is by no means peculiarly Christian. The horrors 
of the Roman Empire present themselves with striking 
significance in company with the appearance of this 
idea. The empire of policy which united men after a 
manner corresponding witli its own idea, was coming 
to its necessary end. Political unity is a unity of 
force. The despotism of Home must turn in upon it- 
self, destroy itself. But it was precisely through this 
catastrophe of political existence that man released 
himself entirely from the heart-stifling toils of politics. 
In the place of Home, appeared the idea of humanity ; 
to the idea of dominion succeeded the idea of love. 
Even the Jews, by imbibing the principle of humanity 



THE CONTRADICTION OP FAITH AND LOVE, 337 

contained in Greek culture, had by this time mollified 
their malignant religious separatism. Philo celebrates 
love as the highest virtue. The extinction of national 
differences lay in the idea of humanity itself. Think- 
ing minds had very early overstepped the civil and 
political separation of man from man. Aristotle dis- 
tinguishes the man from the slave, and places the slave, 
as a man, on a level with his master, uniting them in 
friendship. Epictetus, the slave, was a Stoic ; Anton- 
inus, the emperor was a Stoic also : thus did philosophy 
unite men. The Stoics thought* that man was not 
born for his own sake, but for the sake of others, i. e., 
for love : — a principle which implies infinitely more 
than the celebrated dictum of the Emperor Antoninus, 
which enjoined the love of enemies. The practical 
principle of the Stoics is so far the principle of love. 
The world is to them one city, men its citizens. Seneca, 
in the sublimest sayings, extols love, clemency, human- 
ity, especially towards slaves. Thus political rigour 
and patriotic narrowness were on the wane. 

Christianity was a peculiar manifestation of these 
human tendencies ; — a popular, consequently a reli- 
gious, and certainly, a most intense manifestation of 
this new principle of love. That which elsewhere 
made itself apparent in the process of culture, expressed 
itself here as religious feeling, as a matter of faith. 
Christianity thus reduced a general unity to a par- 
ticular one, it made love collateral to faith ; and by 
this means it placed itself in contradiction with uni- 
versal love. The unity was not referred to its true 
origin. National differences indeed disappeared ; but 
in their place difference of faith, the opposition of 
Christian and un-Christian, more vehement than a na- 
tional antagonism and also more malignant, made its 
appearance in history. 

All love founded on a special historical phenomenon 
contradicts, as has been said, the nature of love, which 

* The Peripatetics also ; who founded love, even that towards all men, 
not on a particular, religious, but a natural principle. 

P 



338 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

endures no limits, which triumphs over all particu- 
larity. Man is to be loved for man's sake. Man is an 
object of love because he is an end in himself, because 
he is a rational and loving being. This is the law of 
the species, the law of the intelligence. Love should 
be immediate, undetermined by anything else than its 
object ; — nay, only as such is it love. But if I inter- 
pose between my fellow-man and myself the idea of an 
individuality, in whom the idea of the species is sup- 
posed to be already realized, I annihilate the very soul 
of love, I disturb the unity by the idea of a third ex- 
ternal to us ; for in that case my fellow-man is an ob- 
ject of love to me only on account of his resemblance 
or relation to this model, not for his own sake. Here 
all the contradictions reappear which we have in the 
personality of God, where the idea of the personality 
by itself, without regard to the qualities which render 
it worthy of love and reverence, fixes itself in the con- 
sciousness and feelings. Love is the subjective reality 
of the species, as reason is its objective reality. In 
love, in reason, the need of an intermediate person dis- 
appears. Christ is nothing but an image, under which 
the unity of the species has impressed itself on the 
popular consciousness. Christ loved men : he wished 
to bless and unite them all without distinction of sex, 
age, rank, or nationality. Christ is the love of man- 
kind to itself embodied in an image — in accordance 
with the nature of religion as we have developed it — 
or contemplated as a person, but a person who (we 
mean, of course, as a religious object) has only the 
significance of an image, who is only ideal. For this 
reason love is pronounced to be the characteristic mark 
of the disciples. But love, as has been said, is nothing 
else than the active proof, the realization of the unity 
of the race, through the medium of the moral disposition. 
The species is not an abstraction ; it exists in feeling, 
in the moral sentiment, in the energy of love. It is 
the species which Infuses love into me. A loving heart 
is the heart of the species throbbing in the individual. 



THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 339 

Thus Christ, as the consciousness of love, is the con- 
sciousness of the species. We are all one in Christ. 
Christ is the consciousness of our identity. He there- 
fore who loves man for the sake of man, who rises to 
the love of the species, to universal love, adequate to 
the nature of the species,* he is a Christian, is Christ 
himself. He does what Christ did, what made Christ 
Christ. Thus, where there arises the consciousness of 
the species as a species, the idea of humanity as a 
whole, Christ disappears, without, however, his true 
nature disappearing ; for he was the substitute for the 
consciousness of the species, the image under which it 
was made present to the people, and became the law 
of the popular life. 

* Active love is and must of course always be particular and limited, 
i. e., directed to one's neighbour. But it is yet in its nature universal, 
since it loves man for man's sake, in the name of the race. Christian 
love, on the contrary, is in its nature exclusive. 



p2 



340 THE ESSENCE OF C EIRISTIANITT. 



CHAPTER XXVIL 

CONCLUDING APPLICATION. 

In the contradiction between Faith and Love which 
has just been exhibited, we see the practical, palpable 
ground of necessity that we should raise ourselves 
above Christianity, above the peculiar stand-point of 
all religion. We have shown that the substance and 
object of religion is altogether human ; we have shown 
that divine wisdom is human wisdom ; that the secret 
of theology is anthropology ; that the absolute mind 
is the so-called finite subjective mind. But religion is 
not conscious that its elements are human ; on the 
contrary, it places itself in opposition to the human, 
or at least it does not admit that its elements are hu- 
man. The necessary turning-point of history is there- 
fore the open confession, that the consciousness of God 
is nothing else than the consciousness of the species ; 
that man can and should raise himself only above the 
limits of his individuality, and not above the laws, the 
positive essential conditions of his species ; that there 
is no other essence which man can think, dream of, 
imagine, feel, believe in, wish for, love and adore as 
the absolute, than the essence of human nature itself.* 
Our relation to religion is therefore not a merely 
negative, but a critical one ; we only separate the true 
from the false ; — though we grant that the truth thus 

* Including external Nature ; lor as man belongs to the essence of 
Nature, — in opposition to common materialism ; BO Nature belongs to 
the essence of man, — in opposition to ^objective idealism; which is also 
the secret of oat " absolute n philosophy, at least in relation to Nature. 

Only by uniting man with Nature can we conquer the suoranaturalistic 
egoism of Christianity. 



CONCLUDING APPLICATION. 341 

separated from falsehood is a new truth, essentially 
different from the old. Religion is the first form of 
self-consciousness. Religions are sacred because they 
are the traditions of the primitive self-consciousness. 
But that which in religion holds the first place, — 
namely, God, — is, as we have shown, in itself and ac- 
cording to truth, the second, for it is only the nature 
of man regarded objectively ; and that which to reli- 
gion is the second, — namely, man, — must therefore be 
constituted and declared the first. Love to man must 
be no derivative love ; it must be original. If human 
nature is the highest nature to man, then practically 
also the highest and first law must be the love of man 
to man. Homo homini Dens est : — this is the great 
practical principle :- — this is the axis on which re- 
volves the history of the world. The relations of 
child and parent, of husband and wife, of brother and 
friend, — in general, of man to man, — in short, all the 
moral relations are per se religious. Life as a whole 
is, in its essential, substantial relations, throughout of 
a divine nature. Its religious consecration is not 
first conferred by the blessing of the priest. But the 
pretension of religion is that it can hallow an object 
by its essentially external co-operation ; it thereby 
assumes to be itself the only holy power ; besides 
itself it knows only earthly, ungodly relations ; hence 
it comes forward in order to consecrate them and 
make them holy. 

But marriage — we mean, of course, marriage as the 
free bond of love* — is sacred in itself, by the very 
nature of the union which is therein effected. That 
alone is a religious marriage, which is a true mar- 
riage, which corresponds to the essence of marriage 
— of love. And so it is with all moral relations. 

* Yes, only as the free bond of love ; for a marriage the bond of which 
is merely an external restriction, not the voluntary, contended self-restric- 
tion of love, in short, a marriage which is not spontaneously concluded, 
spontaneously willed, self-sufficing, is not a true marriage, and therefore 
not a truly moral marriage. 



342 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Then only are they moral, — then only are they enjoy- 
ed in a moral spirit, Trhen they are regarded as sacred 
in themselves. True friendship exists only when the 
boundaries of friendship are preserved with religious 
conscientiousness, with the same conscientiousness 
with which the believer watches over the dignity of 
his God. Let friendship be sacred to thee, property 
sacred, marriage sacred, — sacred the well-being of 
every man ; but let them be sacred in and by them- 
selves. 

In Christianity the moral laws are regarded as the 
commandments of God ; morality is even made the 
criterion of piety ; but ethics have nevertheless a sub- 
ordinate rank, they have not in themselves a religious 
significance. This belongs only to faith. Above 
morality hovers God, as a being distinct from man, a 
being to whom the best is due, while the remnants 
only fall to the share of man. All those dispositions 
which ought to be devoted to life, to man, — all the 
best powers of humanity, are lavished on the being 
who wants nothing. The real cause is converted into 
an impersonal means, a merely conceptional, imagin- 
ary cause usurps the place of the true one. Man 
thanks God for those benefits which have been ren- 
dered to him even at the cost of sacrifice by his fellow 
man. The gratitude which he expresses to his bene- 
factor is only ostensible ; it is paid, not to him, but 
to God. He is thankful, grateful to God, but un- 
thankful to man.* Thus is the moral sentiment sub- 
verted in religion ! Thus does man sacrifice man to 
God ! The bloody human sacrifice is in fact only a 
rude, material expression of the inmost secret of reli- 
gion. Where bloody human sacrifices are offered to 

* "Because God does good through government, great men and crea- 
tures in general, people rash into error, lean on creatures and not on the 
Creator; — they do not look from the creature to the Creator. Hence it 

came that the heathens made gods of kings For they cannot and 

will not perceive that the work or tin- benefit comes from God, and not 
merely from the creature, though the latter is a means, through which 
God works, helps us, and gives to us." — Luther (T. iv. p. 237.) 



CONCLUDING APPLICATION. 343 

God, such sacrifices are regarded as the highest thing, 
physical existence as the chief good. For this reason 
life is sacrificed to God, and it is so on extraordinary 
occasions ; the supposition being that this is the way 
to show him the greatest honour. If Christianity no 
longer, at least in our day, offers bloody sacrifices to 
its God, this arises, to say nothing of other reasons, 
from the fact that physical existence is no longer re- 
garded as the highest good. Hence the soul, the 
emotions are now offered to God, because these are 
held to be something higher. But the common case 
is, that in religion man sacrifices some duty towards 
man — such as that of respecting the life of his fellow, 
of being grateful to him — to a religious obligation, — 
sacrifices his relation to man to his relation to God. 
The Christians, by the idea that God is without wants, 
and that he is only an object of pure adoration, have 
certainly done away with many pernicious conceptions. 
But this freedom from wants is only a metaphysical 
idea, which is by no means part of the peculiar nature 
of religion. When the need for worship is supposed 
to exist only on one side, the subjective side, this has 
the invariable effect of one-sidedness, and leaves the 
religious emotions cold ; hence, if not in express 
words, yet in fact, there must be attributed to God a 
condition corresponding to the subjective need, the 
need of the worshipper, in order to establish recipro- 
city.* All the positive definitions of religion are 
based on reciprocity. The religious man thinks of 
God, because God thinks of him ; he loves God, be- 

* " They who honour me, I will honour, and they who despise me 
shall be lightly esteemed." — 1, Sam. ii. 30. " Jam se, o bone pater, 
vermis vilissimus et odio dignissimus sempitemo, tamen confidit amari, 
quoniam "se sentit amare, imo quia se amari prsesentit, non redamare 
confunditur ...... Nemo itaque se amari diffidat, qui jam am at." — 

Bernardus ad Thomam (Epist. 107.) A very fine and pregnant sentence. 
If I exist not for God, God exists not for me ; if I do not love, I am not 
loved. The passive is the active certain of itself, the object is the subject 
certain of itself. To love is to bo man, to be loved is to be God. I am 
loved, says God ; I love, says man. It i.s not until later that this is re- 
versed, that the passive transforms itself into the active, and conversely. 



344 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

cause God has first loved him. God is jealous of 
man ; religion is jealous of morality ;* it sucks away 
the best forces of morality ; it renders to man only 
the things that are man's, but to God the things that 
are God's ; and to Him is rendered true, living emo- 
tion, — the heart. 

When in times in which peculiar sanctity was at- 
tached to religion, we find marriage, property, and 
civil law respected, this has not its foundation in re- 
ligion, but in the original, natural sense of morality 
and right, to which the true social relations are sa- 
cred as such. He to whom the Right is not holy for 
its own sake, will never be made to feel it sacred by 
religion. Property did not become sacred because it 
was regarded as a divine institution ; but it was re- 
garded as a divine institution because it was felt to be 
in itself sacred. Love is not holy, because it is a 
predicate of God, but it is a predicate of God because 
it is in itself divine. The heathens do not worship 
the light or the fountain, because it is a gift of God, 
but because it has of itself a beneficial influence on 
man, because it refreshes the sufferer ; on account of 
this excellent quality they pay it divine honours. 

Wherever morality is based on theology, wherever 
the right is made dependent on divine authority, the 
most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified 
and established. I can found morality on theology only 
when I myself have already defined the divine being 
by means of morality. In the contrary case, I have 

* " The Lord spake to Gideon : The people are to many, that are with 
thee, that I should give Midian into their hands ; Israel might glorify 
itself against me and say : My hand has delivered me," — ?'. «., " Xe Israel 
sibi tribuat, quae mihi debentur." Judges vii. 2. " Thus saith the Lord: 
Cursed is the man that trostetb in man. Bat blessed is the man that 
. in the Lord and whose hope is in the Lord." — Jer. xvii. 5. M God 
desires not our gold, body and possessions, but lias given these to the 
emperor, (that is, to the representative of the world, of the state.) and to 
us through the emperor. Hut the heart, which is the greatest and best 
in man, he has reserved for himself; — this mu.t be our ottering to God — 
that we believe in him." — Luther (xvi. p. 50.")). 



CONCLUDING APPLICATION. 345 

no criterion of the moral and immoral, but merely an 
unmoral, arbitrary basis, from which I may deduce 
anything I please. Thus, if I would found morality 
on God, I must first of all place it in God : for Mo- 
rality, Right, in short, all substantial relations, have 
their only basis in themselves, can only have a real 
foundation — such as truth demands — when they are 
thus based. To place anything in God, or to derive 
anything from God, is nothing more than to withdraw 
it from the test of reason, to institute it as indubita- 
ble, unassailable, sacred, without rendering an account 
why. Hence self-delusion, if not wicked, insidious 
design, is at the root of all efforts to establish mo- 
rality, right, on theology. Where we are in earnest 
about the right we need no incitement or support 
from above. We need no Christian rule of political 
right ; we need only one which is rational, just, hu- 
man. The right, the true, the good, has always its 
ground of sacredness in itself, in its quality. Where 
man is in earnest about ethics, they have in themselves 
the validity of a divine power. If morality has no 
foundation in itself, there is no inherent necessity for 
morality ; morality is then surrendered to the ground- 
less arbitrariness of religion. 

Thus the work of the self-conscious reason in rela- 
tion to religion is simply to destroy an illusion : — an 
illusion, however, which is by no means indifferent, 
but which, on the contrary, is profoundly injurious in 
its effects on mankind : which deprives man as well 
of the power of real life, as of the genuine sense of 
truth and virtue ; for even love, in itself the deepest, 
truest emotion, becomes by means of religiousness 
merely ostensible, illusory, since religious love gives 
itself to man only for God's sake, so that it is given 
only in appearance to man, but in reality to God. 

And we need only, as we have shown, invert the re- 
ligious relations — regard that as an end which religion 
supposes to be a means — exalt that into the primary 
which in religion is subordinate, the accessory, the con- 

p3 



346 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

dition, — at once we have destroyed the illusion, and 
the unclouded light of truth streams in upon us. The 
sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, which 
are the characteristic symbols of the Christian reli- 
gion, may serve to confirm and exhibit this truth. 

The water of Baptism is to religion only the means 
by which the Holy Spirit imparts itself to man. But 
by this conception it is placed in contradiction with 
reason, with the truth of things. On the one hand, 
there is virtue in the objective, natural quality of 
water ; on the other, there is none, but it is a merely 
arbitrary medium of divine grace and omnipotence. 
We free ourselves from these and other irreconcilable 
contradictions, we give a true significance to Baptism, 
only by regarding it as a symbol of the value of 
water itself. Baptism should represent to us the 
wonderful but natural effect of water on man. Water 
has in fact not merely physical effects, but also, and as 
a result of these, moral and intellectual effects on man. 
Water not only cleanses man from bodily impurities, 
but in water the scales fall from his eyes : he sees, he 
thinks, more clearly ; he feels himself freer ; water 
extinguishes the fire of appetite. How many saints 
have had recourse to the natural qualities of water, in 
order to overcome the assaults of the devil ! What 
was denied by Grace has been granted by Nature. 
Water plays a part not only in dietetics, but also in 
moral and mental discipline. To purify oneself, to 
bathe, is the first, though the lowest of virtues.* In 
the stream of water the fever of selfishness is allayed. 

* Christian baptism also is obviously only a relic of the ancient Na- 
ture-worship, in which, as in the Persian, water was a means of religious 
purification. (S. Rhode : Die heilige Sage, &c. pp. 305, 426.) Here, 
however, water baptism had a much truer, and consequently a deeper 
meaning, than with the Christians, because it rested on the natural power 
and value of water. But indeed for those simple views of Nature which 
characterized the old religions, our speculative as well as theological 
anpranatttralism lias neither sense nor understanding. When therefore 
the Persians, the Hindoos, the Egyptians, the Hebrews, made physical 
purity a religious duty, they were herein far wiser than the Christian 



CONCLUDING APPLICATION. 347 

Water is the readiest means of making friends with 
Nature. The bath is a sort of chemical process, in 
which our individuality is resolved into the objective 
life of Nature. The man rising from the water is a 
new, a regenerate man. The doctrine that moral- 
ity can do nothing without means of grace, has a 
valid meaning if, in place of imaginary, superna- 
tural means of grace, we substitute natural means. 
Moral feeling can effect nothing without Nature ; 
it must ally itself with the simplest natural means. 
The profoundest secrets lie in common every-day 
things, such as supranaturalistic religion and spe- 
culation ignore, thus sacrificing real mysteries to 
imaginary, illusory ones ; as here, for example, the 
real power of water is sacrificed to an imaginary one. 
Water is the simplest means of grace or healing for the 
maladies of the soul as well as of the body. But 
water is effectual only where its use is constant and 
regular. Baptism, as a single act, is either an alto- 
gether useless and unmeaning institution, or, if real 
effects are attributed to it, a superstitious one. But 
it is a rational, a venerable institution, if it is under- 
stood to typify and celebrate the moral and physical 
curative virtues of water. 

But the sacament of water required a supplement. 
Water, as a universal element of life, reminds us of 
our origin from Nature, an origin which we have in 
common with plants and animals. In Baptism we bow 
to the power of a pure Nature-force ; water is the ele- 
ment of natural equality and freedom, the mirror of 
the golden age. But we men are distinguished from 
the plants and animals, which together with the in- 
organic kingdom we comprehend under the common 
name of Nature ; — we are distinguished from Nature. 
Hence we must celebrate our distinction, our specific 
difference. The symbols of this our difference are 

saints, who attested the supranaturalistic principle of their religion by 
physical impurity. Supranaturalism in theory becomes anti-naturalism 
in practice. Supranaturalism is only a euphemism for anti-naturalism. 



348 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY, 

bread and wine. Bread and wine are, as to their 
materials, products of nature ; as to their form, pro- 
ducts of man. If in water we declare : man can do 
nothing without Nature; by bread and wine we declare: 
Nature needs man, as man needs Nature. In water, 
human, mental activity is nullified; in bread and wine 
it attains self-satisfaction. Bread and wine are super- 
natural products, — in the only valid and true sense, 
the sense which is not in contradiction with reason 
and Nature. If in water we adore the pure force of 
Nature, in bread and wine we adore the supernatural 
power of mind, of consciousness, of man. Hence this 
sacrament is only for man matured into consciousness ; 
while baptism is imparted to infants. But we at the 
same time celebrate here the true relation of mind to 
Nature : Nature gives the material, mind gives the 
form. The sacrament of Baptism inspires us with 
thankfulness towards Nature, the sacrament of bread 
and wine with thankfulness towards man. Bread and 
wine typify to us the truth that Man is the true God 
and Saviour of man. 

Eating and drinking is the mystery of the Lord's Sup- 
per; — eating and drinking is in fact in itself a religious 
act ; at least, ought to be so.* Think, therefore, with 
every morsel of bread which relieves thee from the pain 
of hunger, with every draught of wine which cheers 
thy heart, of the God, who confers these beneficent 
gifts upon thee, — think of Man ! But in thy gratitude 
towards man forget not gratitude towards holy Nature ! 
Forget not that wine is the blood of plants, and flour 
the flesh of plants, which are sacrificed for thy well- 
being ! Forget not that the plant typifies to thee the 

* " Eating and drinking is the easiest of all work, for men like nothing 
better: yea. the most joyful work in the whole world is eating and drink- 
ing, as it is commonly said : before eating no dancing, and, On a fuU 
stomach stands a merry head. In short, eating and drinking is a pleas- 
ant necessary work ; — that is a doctrine soon learned and made popular. 
The same pleasant necessary work takes our blessed Lord Christ and 
bays: u I have prepared a joyful, sweet and pleasant meal, I will lay on 
you no hard heavy work . . I institute a supper," &c. — Luther (xvi. 222.) 



CONCLUDING APPLICATION. 349 

essence of nature, which lovingly surrenders itself for 
thy enjoyment! Therefore forget not the gratitude 
which thou owest to the natural qualities of bread and 
wine ! And if thou art inclined to smile that I call 
eating and drinking religious acts, because they are 
common every-day acts, and are therefore performed by 
multitudes without thought, without emotion ; reflect, 
that the Lord's Supper is to multitudes a thoughtless, 
emotionless act, because it takes place often ; and, for 
the sake of comprehending the religious significance of 
bread and wine, place thyself in a position where the 
daily act is unnaturally, violently interrupted. Hun- 
ger and thirst destroy not only the physical but also 
the mental and moral powers of man ; they rob him 
of his humanity — of understanding, of consciousness. 
Oh! if thou shouldst ever experience such want, how 
wouldst thou bless and praise the natural qualities of 
bread and wine, which restore to thee thy humanity, 
thy intellect! It needs only that the ordinary course 
of things be interrupted in order to vindicate to com- 
mon things an uncommon significance, to life, as such, a 
religious import. Therefore let bread be sacred for us, 
let wine be sacred, and also let water be sacred ! Amen. 



APPENDIX. 

EXPLANATION S— REM ARKS— ILLUSTRATIVE 
CITATIONS. 



Man has his highest being, his God, in himself; not in 
himself as an individual, but in his essential nature, his 
species. No individual is an adequate representation 
of his species, but only the human individual is con- 
scious of the distinction between the species and the 
individual ; in the sense of this distinction lies the 
root of religion. The yearning of man after something 
above himself is nothing else than the longing after 
the perfect type of his nature, the yearning to be free 
from himself, i. e., from the limits and defects of his 
individuality. Individuality is the self-conditionating, 
the self-limitation of the species. Thus man has 
cognizance of nothing above himself, of nothing beyond 
the nature of humanity ; but to the individual man 
this nature presents itself under the form of an indi- 
vidual man. Thus, for example, the child sees the 
nature of man above itself in the form of its parents, 
the pupil in the form of his tutor. But all feelings 
which man experiences towards a superior man, nay, 
in general, all moral feelings which man has towards 
man, are of a religious nature.* Man feels nothing 
towards God which he does not also feel towards man. 
Homo homini deus est. Want teaches prayer ; but in 

* " Manifestum igitur est tan turn religionis sanguini et affinitati, 
quantum ipsis Diis immortalibus tributum : quia inter ista tarn sancta 
vincula non magis, quam in aliquo loco sacrato nudare se, nefas esse 
credebatur." — Valer. Max. (1. ii. c. i.) 



352 APPENDIX. 

misfortune, in sorrow, man kneels to entreat help of 
man also. Feeling makes God a man, but for the 
same reason it makes man a God. How often in deep 
emotion, which alone speaks genuine truth, man ex- 
claims to man : Thou art, thou hast been my redeemer, 
my saviour, my protecting spirit, my God ! We feel 
awe, reverence, humility, devout admiration, in think- 
ing of a truly great, noble man ; we feel ourselves 
worthless, we sink into nothing, even in the presence 
of human greatness. The purely, truly human emotions 
are religious ; but for that reason the religious emo- 
tions are purely human : the only difference is, that 
the religious emotions are vague, indefinite ; but even 
this is only the case when the object of them is inde- 
finite. Where God is positively defined, is the object 
of positive religion, there God is also the object of 
positive, definite human feelings, the object of fear 
and love, and therefore he is a positively human being ; 
for there is nothing more in God than what lies in 
feeling. If in the heart there is fear and terror, in 
God there is anger ; if in the heart there is joy, hope, 
confidence, in God there is love. Fear makes itself 
objective in anger; joy in love, in mercy. "As it is 
with me in my heart, so it is with God." "As my 
heart is, so is God."— Luther (T. i. p. 72.) But a 
merciful and angry God — Devs vere irascitur (Melanc- 
thon) — is a God no longer distinguishable from the 
human feelings and nature. Thus even in religion 
man bows before the nature of man under the form of 
a personal human being ; religion itself expressly de- 
clares — and all anthropomorphisms declare this in 
opposition to pantheism, — quod supra nos nihil ad nos : 
that is, a God who inspires us with no human emotions, 
who does not reflect our own emotions, in a word, who 
is not a man, — Buch a God is nothing to us, has no in- 
terest for ns, does not concern us. (See the passages 
cited in this work from Luther.) 

Religion has thus no dispositions and emotions which 
are peculiar to itself; what it claims as belonging ex- 



APPENDIX. 353 

clusively to its object, are simply the same dispositions 
and emotions that man experiences either in relation 
to himself (as, for example, to his conscience), or to 
his fellow-man, or to Nature. You must not fear men, 
but God ; you must not love man, — L e.\ not truly, for 
his own sake, — but God ; you must not humble your- 
selves before human greatness, but only before the 
Lord ; not believe and confide in man, but only in God. 
Hence comes the danger of worshipping false gods in 
distinction from the true God. Hence the "jealousy" 
of God. " Ego Jeho.va, Deus tuus, Deus sum zelotypus. 
Ut zelotypus vir dicitur, qui rival em pati nequit: sic 
Deus socium in cultu, quern ab hominibus postulat, 
ferre non potest." (Clericus, Comment, in Exod. c. 
20, v. 5.) Jealousy arises because a being preferred 
and loved by me directs to another the feelings and 
dispositions which I claim for myself. But how could 
I be jealous if the impressions and emotions which I 
excite in the beloved being were altogether peculiar 
and apart, were essentially different from the impres- 
sions which another can make on him ? If, therefore, 
the emotions of religion were objectively, essentially 
different from those which lie out of religion, there 
would be no possibility of idolatry in man, or of jeal- 
ousy in God. As the flute has another sound to me 
than the trumpet, and I cannot confound the impres- 
sions produced by the former with the impressions 
produced by the latter ; so I could not transfer to a 
natural or human being the emotions of religion, if the 
object of religion, God, were specifically different from 
the natural or human being, and consequently the 
impressions which he produced on me were specific, 
peculiar. 

§ 2. , 

Feeling alone is the object of feeling. Feeling is sym- 
pathy ; feeling arises only in the love of man to man. 
Sensations man has in isolation ; feelings only in com- 
munity. Only in sympathy does sensation rise into 



354 APPENDIX. 

feeling. Feeling is aesthetic, human sensation ; only 
what is human, is the object of feeling. In feeling 
man is related to his fellow man as to himself ; he is 
alive to the sorrows, the joys of another as his own. 
Thus only by communication does man rise above 
merely egoistic sensation into feeling ; — participated 
sensation is feeling. He who has no need of partici- 
pating has no feeling. But what does the hand, the 
kiss, the glance, the voice, the tone, the word — as the 
expression of emotion — impart? Emotion. The very 
same thing which, pronounced or performed without 
the appropriate tone, without emotion, is only an object 
of indifferent perception, becomes, when uttered or 
performed with emotion, an object of feeling. To feel 
is to have a sense of sensations, to have emotion in the 
perception of emotion. Hence the brutes rise to feel- 
ing only in the sexual relation, and therefore only 
transiently ; for here the being experiences sensation 
not in relation to itself taken alone, or to an object 
without sensation, but to a being having like emotions 
with itself, — not to another as a distinct object, but to an 
object which in species is identical. Hence Nature is 
an object of feeling to me only when I regard it as a 
being akin to me, and in sympathy with me. 

It is clear from what has been said, that only where 
in truth, if not according to the subjective conception, 
the distinction between the divine and human being is 
abolished, is the objective existence of God, the exist- 
ence of God as an objective, distinct being, abolished : — 
only there, I say, is religion made a mere matter of feel- 
ing, or conversely, feeling the chief point in religion. 
The last refuge of theology therefore is feeling. God is 
renounced by the understanding ; he has no longer the 
dignity of a real object, of a reality which imposes 
itself on the understanding ; hence he is transferred 
to feeling ; in feeling his existence is thought to be 
secure. And doubtless this is the safest refuge ; for 
to make feeling the essence of religion is nothing else 
than to make feeling the essence of God. And as ccr- 



APPENDIX. 355 

tainly as I exist, so certainly does my feeling exist ; 
and as certainly as my feeling exists, so certainly does 
my God exist. The certainty of God is here nothing 
else than the self-certainty of human feeling, the yearn- 
ing after God is the yearning after unlimited, uninter- 
rupted, pure feeling. In life the feelings are inter- 
rupted; they collapse ; they are followed by a state of 
void, of insensibility. The religious problem, there- 
fore, is to give fixity to feeling in spite of the vicissi- 
tudes of life, and to separate it from repugnant distur- 
bances and limitations : God himself is nothing else 
than undisturbed, uninterrupted feeling, feeling for 
which there exists no limits, no opposite. If God 
were a being distinct from thy feeling, he would be 
known to thee in some other way than simply in feel- 
ing ; but just because thou perceivest him only by 
feeling, he exists only in feeling — he is himself only 
feeling. 

§ 3. 

God is man's highest feeling of self freed from all con- 
trarities, or disagreeables. God is the highest being ; 
therefore, to feel God is the highest feeling. But is not 
the highest feeling also the highest feeling of self? So 
long as I have not had the feeling of the highest, so 
long I have not exhausted my capacity of feeling, so 
long I do not yet fully know the nature of feeling. 
What, then, is an object to me in my feeling of the 
highest being ? Nothing else than the highest na- 
ture of my power of feeling. So much as a man can 
feel, so much is (his) God. But the highest degree of 
the power of feeling is also the highest degree of the 
feeling of self. In the feeling of the low I feel myself 
lowered, in the feeling of the high I feel myself exalt- 
ed. The feeling of self and feeling are inseparable, 
otherwise feeling would not belong to myself. Thus 
God, as an object of feeling, or what is the same thing, 
the feeling of God, is nothing else than man's highest 
feeling of self. But God is the freest, or rather the 



356 APPENDIX. 

absolutely, only free being ; thus God is man's highest 
feeling of freedom. How couldst thou be conscious of 
the highest being as freedom, or freedom as the 
highest being, if thou didst not feel thyself free ? But 
when dost thou feel thyself free ? When thou feelest 
God. To feel God is to feel oneself free. For exam- 
ple, thou feelest desire, passion, the conditions of time 
and place, as limits. What thou feelest as a limit 
thou strugglest against, thou breakest loose from, thou 
deniest. The consciousness of a limit, as such, is 
already an anathema, a sentence of condemnation pro- 
nounced on this limit, for it is an oppressive, disagree- 
ble, negative consciousness. Only the feeling of the 
good, of the positive, is itself good and positive — is 
joy. Joy alone is feeling in its element, is paradise, 
because it is unrestricted activity. The sense of pain 
in an organ is nothing else than the sense of a dis- 
turbed, obstructed, thwarted activity ; in a word, the 
sense of something abnormal, anomalous. Hence thou 
strivest to escape from the sense of limitation into un- 
limited feeling. By means of the will, or the imagin- 
ation, thou negativest limits, and thou obtainest the 
feeling of freedom. This feeling of freedom is God. 
God is exalted above desire and passion, above the 
limits of space and time. But this exaltation is thy 
own exaltation above that which appears to thee as a 
limit. Does not this exaltation of the divine being 
exalt thee ? How could it do so, if it were external 
to thee? No ; God is an exalted being only for him 
who himself has exalted thoughts and feelings. Hence 
the exaltation of the divine being varies according to 
that which different men, or nations, perceive as a 
limitation to the feeling of self, and which they conse- 
quently negative, or eliminate from their ideal. 

§ 4. 

The disUndicm between the "heathen" or philosophic, 
and the Christian God — the non-human, or pantheistic, 

and tlie human, personal God — reduces itself only to the 



APPENDIX. 357 

distinction behceen the understanding or reason, and the 
heart or feelings. Reason is the self-consciousness of 
the species, as such ; feeling is the self-consciousness 
of individuality ; the reason has relation to exist- 
ences, as things ; the heart to existences, as persons. 
I am is an expression of the heart ; I think, of the 
reason. Cogito, ergo sum ? No ! Sentio, ergo sum. 
Feeling only is my existence ; thinking is my non- 
existence, the negation of my individuality, the po- 
siting of the species ; reason is the annihilation of 
personality. To think is an act of spiritual marriage. 
Only beings of the same species understand each 
other ; the impulse to communicate thought is the 
intellectual impulse of sex. Reason is cold, because 
its maxim is, audiatur et altera pars, because it does 
not interest itself in man alone ; but the heart is a 
partisan of man. Reason loves all impartially, but 
the heart only what is like itself. It is true that 
the heart has pity also on the brutes, but only be- 
cause it sees in the brute something more than the 
brute. The heart loves only what it identifies with 
itself. It says : Whatsoever thou dost to this being, 
thou dost to me. The heart loves only itself; does 
not get beyond itself, beyond man. The superhuman 
God is nothing else than the supernatural heart ; the 
heart does not give us the idea of another, of a being 
different from ourselves. " For the heart, Nature is 
an echo, in which it hears only itself. Emotion, in 
the excess of its happiness, transfers itself to exter- 
nal things. It is the love which can withhold itself 
from no existence, which gives itself forth to all; 
but it only recognises as existing that which it 
knows to have emotion."* Reason, on the contrary, 
has pity on animals, not because it finds itself in 
them, or identifies them with man, but because it 
recognises them as beings distinct from man, not 
existing simply for the sake of man, but also as 
having rights of their own. The heart sacrifices the 

* See the author's " Leibnitz." 



358 APPENDIX. 

species to the individual, the reason sacrifices the 
individual to the species. The man without feeling 
has no home, no private hearth. Feeling, the heart, 
is the domestic life; the reason is the res publico, of 
man. Reason is the truth of Nature, the heart is 
the truth of man. To speak popularly, reason is 
the God of Nature, the heart the God of man ; — a 
distinction however which, drawn thus sharply, is, like 
the others, only admissible in antithesis. Everything 
which man wishes, but which reason, which Nature 
denies, the heart bestows. God, immortality, free- 
dom, in the supranaturalistic sense, exist only in the 
heart. The heart is itself the existence of God, the 
existence of immortality. Satisfy yourselves with this 
existence ! You do not understand your heart ; 
therein lies the evil. You desire a real, external, 
objective immortality, a God out of yourselves. Here 
is the source of delusion. 

But as the heart releases man from the limits, 
even the essential limits of Nature ; reason, on the 
other hand, releases Nature from the limits of external 
finiteness. It is true that Nature is the light and 
measure of reason : — a truth which is opposed to 
abstract Idealism. Only what is naturally true is 
logically true : what has no basis in Nature has no 
basis at all. That which is not a physical law is 
not a metaphysical law. Every true law in meta- 
physics can and must be verified physically. But at 
the same time reason is also the light of Nature ; — 
and this truth is the barrier against crude material- 
ism. Reason is the nature of things come fully to 
itself, re-established in its entireness. Reason di- 
vests things of the disguises and transformations 
which they have undergone in the conflict and agi- 
tation of the external world, and reduces them to their 
true character. Most, indeed nearly all, crystals — to 
give an obvious illustration — appear in nature under 
a form altogether different from their fundamental 
one ; nay, many crystals never have appeared in their 



APPENDIX. 359 

fundamental form. Nevertheless, the mineralogical 
reason has discovered that fundamental form. Hence 
nothing is more foolish than to place Nature in oppo- 
sition to reason, as an essence in itself incomprehensi- 
ble to reason. If reason reduces transformations and 
disguises to their fundamental forms, does it not effect 
that which lies in the idea of Nature itself, but which, 
prior to the operation of reason, could not be effected 
on account of external hinderances ? What else then 
does reason do than remove external disturbances, in- 
fluences and obstructions, so as to present a thing as 
it ought to be, to make the existence correspond to 
the idea ; for the fundamental form is the idea of the 
crystal. Another popular example. Granite consists 
of mica, quartz, and feldspar. But frequently other 
kinds of stone are mingled with it. If we had no 
other guide and tutor than the senses, we should with- 
out hesitation reckon as constituent parts of granite 
all the kinds of stone which we ever find in combina- 
tion with it ; we should say yes to everything the 
senses told us, and so never come to the true idea of 
granite. But reason says to the credulous senses : 
Quod 71071. It discriminates ; it distinguishes the es- 
sential from the accidental elements. Reason is the 
midwife of Nature ; it explains, enlightens, rectifies 
and completes Nature. Now that which separates the 
essential from the non-essential, the necessary from 
the accidental, what is proper to a thing from what 
is foreign, which restores what has been violently 
sundered to unity, and what has been forcibly united 
to freedom, — is not this divine ? Is not such an agency 
as this the agency of the highest, of divine love ? 
And how would it be possible that reason should ex- 
hibit the pure nature of things, the original text of 
the universe, if it were not itself the purest, most ori- 
ginal essence ? But reason has no partiality for this 
or that species of things. It embraces with equal 
interest the whole universe ; it interests itself in all 
things and beings without distinction, without excep- 



360 APPENDIX. 

tion ; — it bestows the same attention on the worm 
which human egoism tramples under its feet, as on 
man. as on the sun in the firmament. Reason is thus 
the all-embracing, all compassionating being, the love 
of the universe to itself. To reason alone belongs the 
great work of the resurrection and restoration of all 
things and beings — universal redemption and recon- 
ciliation. Xot even the unreasoning animal, the 
speechless plant, the unsentient stone, shall be ex- 
cluded from this universal festival. But how would 
it be possible that reason should interest itself in all 
beings without exception, if reason were not itself 
universal and unlimited in its nature ? Is a limited 
nature compatible with unlimited interest, or an un- 
limited interest with a limited nature ? By what dost 
thou recognise the limitation of a being but by the 
limitation of his interest? As far as the interest ex- 
tends, so far extends the nature. The desire of know- 
lege is infinite ; reason then is infinite. Reason is 
the highest species of being ; — hence it includes all 
species in the sphere of knowledge. Reason cannot 
content itself in the individual ; it has its adequate 
existence only when it has the species for its object, 
and the species not as it has already developed itself 
in the past and present, but as it will develop itself 
in the unknown future. In the activity of reason I feel 
a distinction between myself and reason in me ; this 
distinction is the limit of the individuality ; in feel- 
ing I am conscious of no interest between myself and 
feeling ; and with this absence of distinction there is 
an absence also of the sense of limitation. Hence it 
arises that to so many men reason appears finite, and 
only feeling infinite. And, in fact, feeling, the heart 
of man as a rational being, is as infinite, as universal 
a- reason ; -ince man only truly perceives and under- 
stands that for which he has feeling. 

Thus reason is the essence of Nature and Man, re- 
leased from non-essential limits, in their identity ; it 
is the universal being, the universal God. The heart, 



APPENDIX, 361 

considered in its difference from the reason, is the pri- 
vate God of man; the personal God is the heart of 
man, emancipated from the limits or laws of Nature.* 

§5. 

Nature, the vjorld, has no value, no interest for Chris- 
tians. The Christian thinks only of himself and the 
salvation of his soul. "A te incipiat cogitatio tua et 
in te finiatur, nee frustra in alia distendaris, te neglecto. 
Procter salutem tuam nihil cogites. Be inter, homo. 
(Among the spurious writings of St. Bernard.) Si te 
vigilanter homo attendas, mirum est, si ad aliud un- 
guam inteiidas. — Divus Bernardus. (Tract, de XII 

grad. humil. et sup.) Orbe sit sol major, an pedis 

unius latitudine metiatur? alieno ex lumine an pro- 
priis luceat fulgoribus luna ? quae negue scire compen- 
dium, negue ignorare detrimentum est uUum Res 

vestra in ancipiti sita est : salus dico animarum ves- 
trarum. — Arnobius (adv. gentes, 1. ii. c. 61). Quaero 
igitur ad quam rem scientia referenda sit ; si ad causas 
rerum naturalium, quae beatitude erit mihi proposita, 
si sciero unde Nilus oriatur, vel quicquid de coelo 
Physici delirant ? — Lactantius. (Instit. div. 1. iii. c. 8.) 

Etiam curiosi esse prohibemur Sunt enim qui 

desertis virtutibus et nescientes quid sit Deus .... 
mugnum aliquid se agere putant, si universam istam 
corporis molem, quam mundum nuncupamus, curiosis- 
sime intentissimeque perquirant . . . Eeprimat igitur se 
anima ab hujusmodi vanae cognitionis cupiditate, si se 
castam Deo servare disposuit. Tali enim amore ple- 
rumque decipitur, ut (ant) nihil putet esse nisi corpus.) — 
Augustinus (de Mor. Eccl. cath. 1. i. c. 21). Be terrae 

* [Here follows in the original a distinction between Herz, or feeling 
directed towards real objects, and therefore practically sympathetic ; and 
Gemueth, or feeling directed towards imaginary objects, and therefore 
practically unsympathetic, self-absorbed. But the verbal distinction is 
not adhered to in the ordinary use of the language, or, indeed, by Feuer- 
bach himself; and the psychological distinction is sufficiently indicated in 
other parts of the present work. The passage is therefore omitted, as 
likely to confuse the reader. — Tr.] 

Q 



362 APPENDIX. 

quoque vel qualitate vel positione tractare, nihil prosit 
ad spem futuri, cum satis sit ad scientiam, quod scrip- 
turarum divinarinn series comprehendit, quod Deus 
suspendit terrain in nihilo. — Ambrosius (Hexaenieron, 
1. i. c. 6). Longe utique praestantius est, nosse resur- 
recturam carnem ac sine fine victuram, quam quidquid 
in ea medici scrutando discere potuerunt. — Augustinus 
(de Anima et ejus orig. 1. iv. e. 10). n "Let natural 

science alone It is enough that thou knowest 

fire is hot, water cold and moist Know how 

thou oughtest to treat thy field, thy cow, thy house 
and child — that is enough of natural science for thee. 
Think how thou mayest learn Christ, who will show 
thee thyself, who thou art, and what is thy capability. 
Thus wilt thou learn God and thyself, which no na- 
tural master or natural science ever taught." — Luther 
(T. xiii. p. 264). 

Such quotations as these, which might be multiplied 
indefinitely, show clearly enough that true, religious 
Christianity has within it no principle of scientific 
and material culture, no motive to it. The practical 
end and object of Christians is solely heaven, i.e., the 
realized salvation of the soul. The theoretical end 
and object of Christians is solely God, as the being 
identical with the salvation of the soul. He who 
knows God knows all things ; and as God is infi- 
nitely more than the world, so theology is infinitely 
more than the knowledge of the world. Theology 
makes happy, for its object is personified happiness. 
Infelix homo, qui seit ilia omnia (created things) te 
autem nescit Beatus autem qui te scit etiam si UJa neseiat. 
— Augu3tin (Confess. 1. v. c. 4). Who then would, 
who could exchange the blessed divine being for the 
unblessed worthless things of this world? It is true 
that God reveals himself in Nature, but only vaguely 
dimly, only in his most general attributes ; himself, his 
true personal nature, he reveals only in religion, in 
Christianity, The knowledge of God through Nature, 
is heathenism ; the knowledge of God through himself 



APPENDIX. 863 

through Christ, in whom dwelt the fulness of the God- 
head bodily, is Christianity. What interest, there- 
fore, should Christians have in occupying themselves 
with material, natural things? Occupation with 
Nature, culture in general, presupposes or, at least, 
infallibly produces, a heathenish, mundane, anti-theo- 
logical, anti-supranaturalistic sentiment and belief. 
Hence the culture of modern Christian nations is so 
little to be derived from Christianity, that it is only 
to be explained by the negation of Christianity, a ne- 
gation which certainly was, in the first instance, only 
practical. It is indeed necessary to distinguish be- 
tween what the Christians were as Christians and 
what they were as heathens, as natural men, and thus 
between that which they have said and done in agree- 
ment, and that which they have said and done in con- 
tradiction with their faith. (See on this subject the 
author's P. Bayle.) 

How frivolous, therefore, are modern Christians, 
when they deck themselves in the arts and sciences of 
modern nations as products of Christianity! How 
striking is the contrast in this respect between 
these modern boasters and the Christians of older 
times ! The latter knew of no other Christianity than 
that which is contained in the Christian faith, in faith 
in Christ ; they did not reckon the treasures and 
riches, the arts and sciences of this world, as part of 
Christianity. In all these points, they rather conceded 
the pre-eminence to the ancient heathens, the Greeks 
and Eomans. " Why dost thou not also wonder, 
Erasmus, that from the beginning of the world there 
have always been among the heathens higher, rarer 
people, of greater, more exalted understanding, more 
excellent diligence and skill in all arts, than among 
Christians or the people of God ? Christ himself says, 
that the children of this world are wiser than the 
children of light. Yea, who among the Christians 
could we compare for understanding or application to 
, Cicero (to say nothing of the Greeks, Demosthenes 

Q2 






364 APPENDIX. 

and others) ? w — Luther (T. xix. p. 37). Quid igitur 
nos antecellimas ? Num ingenio, doctrina, morum 
moderatione illos superamus ? Neqnaquam. Sed vere 
Dei agnitionCj invocatione et celebratione prcestamns.— 
Melancthonis (et all Declam T. iii. de vera invocat. 
Dei). 

§ 6. 

In religion man has in view himself alone, or, in re- 
gar ding himself as the object of God, as the end of the 
divine activity, he is an object to himself his own end 
and aim. The mystery of the Incarnation is the mys- 
tery of the love of God to man, and the mystery of the 
love of God to man is the love of man to himself. God 
suffers — suffers for me — this is the highest self-enjoy- 
ment, the highest self-certainty of human feeling. " God 
so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten 
Son." — John iii. 16. " If God be for us, who can be 
against us ? He that spared not his own Son, but gave 
him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely 
give us all things?" — Rom. viii. 31, 32. u God com- 
mendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were 
yet sinners, Christ died for us. — Rom. v. 8. " The 
life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of 
the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for 
me."— Gal. ii. 20. See also, Titus iii. 4 ; Heb. ii. 11. 

11 Credimus in unum Deum patrem et in unum Do- 

minum Jesum Christum filium Dei Deum ex Deo.... 

qui propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem des- 
cendit et incarnatus et homo factus est passus." — Fides 

Nicaenae Synodi. " Servator ex praeexceUenti in 

homines charitate non despexit carnis humanae imbe- 
cillitatem, sed ea indutus ad communem venit hominum 
salutem. " — Clemens Alex. (Stromata, 1. vii. Ed. 
Wirceb. 1779.) " Christianos autem haec universa 
docent, providentiam esse, maxime vero divinissimum 
et propter exceHentiam amoris erga homines incredibi- 
listiiiLuiii providential opus, eft i incarnatio, quae propter 
nos facta est/ 1 — Gtegorii Nysseni, (Philosophiae, 1. viii. 



APPENDIX. 365 

de provid. c. i. 1512. B. Rhenanus. Jo. Cono interp.) 
" Venit siquidem universitatis creator et Dominus : 
venit ad homines, venit propter homines, venit homo." 
— Divus Bernardus Clarev. (de adventu Domini. Basil. 
1552). " Yidete, Pratres, quantum se humiliavit prop- 
ter homines Deus Undenonse ipse homo despiciat, 

propter quern utique ista subire dignatus est Deus"' — 
Augustinus (Sermones ad pop. S. 371, c. 3). "Ohomo 
propter quern Deus factus est homo, aliqidd magnum ie 
credere debes" (S. 380, c. 2). " Quis de se desperet, 
pro quo tarn humilis esse voluit Filius Dei ?" Id (de 
Agone Chr. c. 11). "Qids potest odirehominem, cujus 
naturam et similitudinem videt in humanitate Dei ? Re- 
vera qui odit ilium, odit Deum." — (Manuale, c. 26. 
Among the spurious writing of Augustine.) " Plus nos 
amat Deus quam filium pater.... Propter nosfilio nonpe- 
percit. Et quid plus addo ? et hoc filio justo et hoc 
filio unigenito et hoc filio Deo. Et quid dici amplius 
potest? et hoc pro nobis, i. e. pro malis, etc." — Salvi- 
anus (de gubernatione Dei. Rittershusius, 1611. pp. 
126, 127). "Quid enim mentes nostras tantum erigit 
et ab immortalitatis desperatione liberat, quam quod 

tanti nos fecit Deus, ut Dei filius dignatus nostrum 

inire consortium mala nostra moriendo perferret." — 
Petrus Lomb. (lib. iii. dist. 20, c. 1.) " Attamen si 
ilia quae miseriam nescit, misericordia non praecessisset, 
ad hanc cujus mater est miseria, non accessisset."* — 
D. Bernardus (Tract, de XII gradibus hum. et sup). 
"Ecce omnia tua sunt, quae habeo et unde tibi servio. 
Verum tamen vice versa in magis mihi servis, quam ego 
tibi. Ecce coelum et terra quae in ministerium homi- 
nis creasti, praesto sunt et faciunt quotidie quaecunque 
mandasti. Et hoc parum est : quin etiam Angelos in 
ministerium hominis ordinasti. Transcendit autem 
omnia, quia tu ipse homini servire dignatus es et te 
ipsum daturum ei promisisti. ;? Thomas a Kempis (de 
Imit. 1. iii. c. 10). " Ego omnipotens et altissimus, 
qui cuncta creavi ex nihilo, me homini propter te humi- 
liter subjeci Pepercit tibi oculus meus/quia pretiosa, 



366 APPENDIX. 

fuit anima tua in conspectu meo" (ibid. c. 13). "Fili 
ego descendi de coelo pro saluta tua, suscepi tuas mi- 
serias, non necessitate, sed charitate trahente" (ibid. c. 
18). " Si consilium rei tantae spectamus, quod totum 
pertinet, ut s. litterae demonstrant, ad salutem generis 
humani, quid potest esse dignius Deo, quain ilia tanta 
hujus salutis cura, et ut ita dicamus, tantus in ea re 

sumptus ? Itaque Jesus Christus ipse cum omnibus 

Apostolis....in hoc mysterio Filii Dei lv tfapxi $&,v*pv&s*ng 
angelis hominibusque patefactam esse dicunt magni- 
tudinem sapientis bonitatis divinae" — J. A. Ernesti 
(Dignit. et verit. inc. Filii Dei asserta. Opusc. Theol. 
Lipsiae, 1773. pp. 404, 405. How feeble, how spirit- 
less compared with the expressions of the ancient faith !) 
"Propter me Christus suscepit meas infirmitates, mei 
corporis subiit passiones, pro me peccatum h. e. pro 
omni homine, pro me maledictum factus est, etc. Ille 
flevit, ne tu homo diu fleres. Ille injurias passus est, 
ne tu injuriam tuam doleres." — Ambrosius (de fide ad 
Gratianum, 1. ii. c. 4). " God is not against us men. 
For if God had been against us and hostile to us, he 
would not assuredly have taken the poor wretched 
human nature on himself." " How highly our Lord 
God has honoured us, that he has caused his own Son 
to become man! How could he have made himselt 
nearer to us?"— Luther (T. xvi. pp. 533, 574). "It is 
to be remarked that he (Stephen) is said to have seen 
not God himself but the man Christ, whose nature is 
the dearest and likest and most consoling to man, for 
a man would rather see a man than an angel or any 
other creature, especially in trouble." — Id. (T. xiii. 
p. 170). il It is not thy kingly rule which draws hearts 
to thee, wonderful heart ! — but thy having become 
a man in the fulness of time, and thy walk upon the 
earth, full of weariness." " Though thou goidest the 
sceptre of the starry realm, thou art still our brother ; 
flesh and blood never disowns itself." "The most 
powerful charm that melts my heart, is, that my Lord 
died on the cross/or me." " That it is which moves 



APPENDIX. 367 

me ; I love thee for thy love, that thou, the creator, 
the supreme prince, becamest the Lamb of God for 
me." " Thanks be to thee, dear Lamb of God, with 
thousands of sinners' tears ; thou didst die for me on 
the cross and didst seek me with yearning." " Thy 
blood it is which has made me give myself up to thee ; 
else I had never thought of thee through my whole 
life." " If thou hadst not laid hold upon me, I should 
never have gone to seek thee." " how sweetly the 
soul feeds on the passion of Jesus ! Shame and joy 
are stirred, thou son of God and of man, when in 
spirit we see thee so willingly go to death on the 
cross for us, and each thinks \for me" " The Father 
takes us under his care, the Son washes us with his 
blood, the Holy Spirit is always labouring that he 
may guide and teach us." "Ah! King, great at all 
times, but never greater than in the blood-stained robe 
of the martyr." " My friend is to me and I to him as 
the Cherubim over the mercy-seat : we look at each 
other continually. He seeks repose in my heart, and 
I ever hasten towards his : he wishes to be in my soul, 
and I in the wound in his side." These quotations 
are taken from the Moravian hymn-book (Gesangbuch 
der Evangelischen Bruedergemeine. Gnadau 1824). 
We see clearly enough from the examples above given, 
that the deepest mystery of the Christian religion re- 
solves itself into the mystery of human self-love, but 
that religious self-love is distinguished from natural 
in this, that it changes the active into the passive. 
It is true that the more profound, mystical religious 
sentiment abhors such naked, undisguised egoism as is 
exhibited in the Herrnhut hymns ; it does not in God 
expressly have reference to itself; it rather forgets, 
denies itself, demands an unselfish, disinterested love 
of God, contemplates God in relation to God, not to 
itself. " Causa diligendi Deum, Deus est. Modus sine 
modo diligere . . . Qui Domino confitotur, non quoniam 
sibi bonus est, sed quoniam bonus est, hie vere diligit 
Deum propter Deum et non propter seipsum. Te enim 



3U8 APPENDIX. 

quodammodo perdere, tanquam qui non sis et omnino 
non sentire te ipsum et a temetipso exinaniri et pene 
annullari, coelestis est eonversationis, non humanae 
affectionis' 7 (thus the ideal of love, which, however, is 
first realized in heaven.) — Bernhardus, Tract, de dilig. 
Deo (ad Haymericum.) But this free, unselfish love is 
only the culmination of religious enthusiasm, in which 
the subject is merged in the object. As soon as the 
distinction presents itself — and it necessarily does so 
— so soon does the subject have reference to itself as 
the object of God. And even apart from this : the 
religious subject denies its ego, its personality, only 
because it has the enjoyment of blissful personality in 
God — God per se the realized salvation of the soul, 
God the highest self-contentment, the highest rapture 
of human feeling. Hence the saying : " Qui Deum non 
diligit, seipsum non diligit." 

1% 
Because God suffers, man must suffer. The Christian 
religion is the religion of suffering. " Videlicet vestigia 
Salvatoris sequimur in theatris. Tale nobis scilicet 
Christus reliquit exemplum, quern flevisse legimus, ri- 
sisse non legimus." — Salvianus (1. c. 1. vi. § 181). "Chris- 
tianorum ergo est pressuram pati in hoc saeculo et 
lugere, quorum est aeterna vita." — Origenes (Explan. in 
Ep. Pauli ad Rom. 1. ii. c. ii. interp. Hieronymo). 
" Xemo vitam aeternam, incorruptibilem, immortalem- 
que desiderat, nisi eum vitae hujus temporalis, corrupt- 

ibilis, mortalisque poenitcat Quid ergo euprimus, nisi 

ita non esse utnunc sumus ? Et quid ingoniscimus, nisi 
p< Nintendo, quia ita sumus T — Augustinus (Sermones 
ad pop. S. 351, c. 3). "Si quidcm aliquid melius et 
utilius saluti hominum quam pati foisset, Christus uti- 
que verbo etexemplo ostendissct.... Quoniam per multas 
tribulationes oportct nos intrare in regnum Dei." — 
Thomas a Kempis (de linit. 1. ii. c. 12). When, how- 
ever, the Christian religion is designated as the re- 
ligion of suffering, this of course applies only to the 



APPENDIX, 369 

Christianity of the "mistaken" Christians of old times. 
Protestantism, in its very beginning, denied the suffer- 
ings of Christ as constituting a principle of morality. 
It is precisely the distinction between Catholicism and 
Protestantism, in relation to this subject, that the latter, 
out of self-regard, attached itself only to the merits of 
Christ, while the former, out of sympathy, attached 
itself to his sufferings. " Formerly, in popery, the 
sufferings of the Lord were so preached, that it was 
only pointed out how his example should be imitated. 
After that, the time was filled up with the sufferings 
and sorrows of Mary, and the compassion with which 
Christ and his mother were bewailed ; and the only 
aim was how to make it piteous, and move the people 
to compassion and tears, and he who could do this 
well was held the best preacher for Passion-week. But 
we preach the Lord's sufferings as the Holy Scripture 
teaches us,.... Christ suffered for the praise and glory 

of God but to me, and thee, and all of us, he suffered 

in order to bring redemption and blessedness The 

cause and end of the sufferings of Christ is comprised 
in this-— he suffered for us. This honour is to be given 
to no other suffering,"— -Luther (T. xvi. p. 182). "Lamb ! 
I weep only for joy over thy suffering ; the suffering 
was thine, but thy merit is mine I" "I know of no joys 
but those which come from thy sufferings." " It re- 
mains ever in my mind that it cost thee thy blood to 
redeem me." "0 my Immanuel! how sweet is it to my 
soul when thou permittest me to enjoy the outpouring 
of thy blood." " Sinners are glad at heart that they 
have a Saviour....... it is wondrously beautiful to them 

to see Jesus on the Cross " (Moravian hymn-book). It 
is therefore not to be wondered at, if Christians of the 
present day decline to know anything more of the 
sufferings of Christ. It is they, forsooth, who have 
first made out what true Christianity is — they rely 
solely on the divine word of the Holy Scriptures. And 
the Bible, as every one knows, has the valuable quality, 
that everything may be found in it which it is desired 

Q3 



370 APPENDIX. 

to find. What once stood there, of course now stands 
there no longer. The principle of stability has long 
vanished from the Bible. Divine revelation is as 
changing as human opinion. Tempora mutantur. 



The mystery of the Trinity is the mystery of parti- 
cipated, social life — the mystery of I and thou, "tlnum 
Deum esse confitemur. Non sic unum Deum, quasi soli- 
tarium, nee eundein, qui ipse sibi pater, sit ipse filius, 
Bed patr em verum, qui genuit filium verum, i. e. Deum 
ex Deo....non creatum, sed genitum" — Concil. Chalced. 
(Carranza Summa 1559. p. 139). "Si quis quod scriptum 
est : Faciamus hominem, non patrem ad filium dicere, 
sed ipsum ad semetipsum asserit dixisse Deum, anath- 
ema sit." — Concil. Syrniiense (ibid. p. 68). "Jubet autem 
his verbis : Faciamus hominem, prodeat herba. Ex 
quibus apparet, Deum cum aliquo sibi proximo sermones 
his de rebus conserere. Necesse est igitur aliquem ei 
adfuisse, cum quo universa condens, colloquium mis- 
cebat." — Athanasius (Contra Gentes Orat. Ath. Opp. 
Parish's, 1627. T. i. p. 51). ''Professio enim consortii 
sustulit intelligentiam singularitatis, quod consortium 
aliquid nee potest esse sibi ipsi solitario, neque rursum 

solitudo solitarii recipit : faciamus Non solitario 

convenit dicere : faciamus et nostram." — Petrus Lomb.^ 
(1. i. dist. 2, c. 3, e.) The Protestants explain the 
passage in the same way. " Quod profecto aliter in- 
telligi nequit, quam inter ipsas trinitatis personas quan- 
dam de creando homine institutam fuisse consulta- 
tionem." — Buddeus (Comp. Inst. Theol. dog. cur. J. G. 
Walch. 1. ii. c. i. § 45). '"Let us make' is the word 
of a deliberative council. And from these words it 
necessarily follows again, that in the Godhead there 

must be more than one person For the little word 

1 us ' indicates that he who there speaks is not alone, 
though the Jews make the text ridiculous by saying 
that there is a way of speaking thus, even where there 
is only one person.''' — Luther (T. i. p. 19). Not only 



APPENDIX. 371 

consultations, but compacts take place between the 
chief persons in the Trinity, precisely as in human 
society. " Nihil aliud superest, quam ut consensum 
quemdam patris ac filii adeoque quoddam velut pactum 
(in relation, namely, to the redemption of men) inde 
concludamus." — Buddeus (Comp. 1. iv. c. i. § 4. Note 
2). And as the essential bond of the Divine Persons 
is love, the Trinity is the heavenly type of the closest 

bond of love — marriage. "Nunc Filium Dei pre- 

cemur, ut spiritu sancto suo, qui nexus est et vinculum 
mutni amoris inter aeternum patrem ac filium, sponsi 
et sponsse pectora conglutinet." — Or. de Conjugio 
(Declam. Melancth. T. iii. p. 453). 

The distinctions in the Divine essence of the Trinity 
are natural, physical distinctions. " Jam de proprie- 

tatibus personarum videamus Et est proprium 

solius patris, non quod non est natus ipse, sed quod 
unum filium genuerit, propriumque solius filii, non quod 
ipse non genuit, sed quod de patris essentia, natus est." 
— Hylarius in 1. iii. de trinitate. " Nos filii Dei sumus, 
sed non talis hie filius. Hie enim verus ztproprius est 
filius origine, non adoptione, veritate, non nuncupatione, 
nativitate, non creatione." — Petrus L. (1. i. dist. 26, 
cc. 2, 4). "Quodsi dum eum aeternum confitemur, pro- 
fitemur ipsum Filium ex Patre, quomodo is, qui genitus 

est, genitoris frater esse poterit? Non enim ex ali- 

quo principio praeexistente Pater et Filius procreati 
sunt, ut fratres existimari queant, sed Pater principium 
Filii et genitor est : et Pater Pater est neque ullius 
Filius fuit, et Filius Filius est et non /rater."' — Athana- 
sius (Contra Arianos. Orat. II. Ed. c. T. i. p. 320). 
" Qui (Deus) cum in rebus quae nascuntur in tempore, 
sua bonitate effecerit, ut suae sitbstantiae prolem quae- 
libet res gignat, sicut homo gignit hominem, non alterius 
naturae, sed ejus cujus ipse est, vide quam impie dicatur 
ipse non genuisse id quod ipse est." — Augustinus (Ep. 
170, § 6. Ed. Antw. 1700). "Ut igitur in natura ho- 
minum filium dicimus genitum de substantia patris, 
similem patri : ita secunda persona Filius dicitur, quia 



372 APPENDIX. 

de substantia Patris natus est et ejus est iniago." 
Melancthon (Loci praecipui Theol. Witebergae, 1595. 
p. 30). "As a corporeal son has his flesh and blood 
and nature from his father, so also the Son of God, 
born of the Father, has his divine nature from the 
Father of Eternity." Luther (T. ix. p. 408). H. A. 
Roel, a theologian of the school of Descartes and Coc- 
cejus, had advanced this thesis : "Filium Dei, Secundam 
Deitatis personam improprie dici genitam." This was 
immediately opposed by his colleague, Camp. Vitringa, 
who declared it an unheard of thesis, and maintained : 
" Generationem Filii Dei ab aeterno propriissime enun- 
ciari. 9 ' Other theologians also contended against 
Eoel, and declared : " Generationem in Deo esse max- 
ime veram et propriam." (Acta Eruclit. Supplem. T. 
i. S. vii. p. 377 etc.) That in the Bible also the Filius 
Dei signifies a real son, is unequivocally implied in 
this passage : " God so loved the world that he gave 
his only-begotten Son. 55 If the love of God, which 
this passage insists upon is to be regarded as a truth, 
then the Son also must be a truth, and, in plain lan- 
guage, a physical truth. On this lies the emphasis, that 
God gave his own Son for us — in this alone the proof 
of his great love. Hence the Herrnhut hymn-book 
correctly apprehends the sense of the Bible when it 
says of rt the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is 
also our Father :" "His Son is not too dear. No! 
he gives him up for me, that he may save me from the 
eternal fire by his dear blood. Thou hast so loved 
the world, that thy heart consents to give up the Son, 
thy joy and life, to suffering and death." 

God is a threefold being, a trinity of persons, means : 
God is not only a metaphysical, abstract, spiritual, but 
a physical being. The central point of the Trinity is 
the Son, for the Father is Father only through the Son ; 
but the mystery of the generation of the Son is the 
mystery of physical nature The Son is the need of 
sensnonsness, or of the heart, satisfied in God ; for all 
wishes of the heart, even the wish for a personal God 



APPENDIX. 373 

and for heavenly felicity, are sensuous wishes ; — the 
heart is essentially materialistic, it contents itself only 
with an object which is seen and felt. This is espe- 
cially evident in the conception that the Son, even in 
the midst of the Divine Trinity, has the human body as 
an essential, permanent attribute. Ambrosius : "Scrip- 
turn est Ephes. i. : Secundum carnem igitur omnia ipsi 
subjecta traduntur." Chrysostomus : " Christum se- 
cundum carnem pater jussit a cunctis angelis adorari." 
Theodoretus : "Corpus Dominicum surrexit quidem a 

mortuis, divina glorificata gloria corpus tamen est 

et habet, quam prius habuit, circumscriptionem." (See 
Concordienbuchs-anhang. "Zeugnisse der h. Schrift 
und Altvaeter von Christo," and Petrus L. 1. iii. dist. 
10, cc. 1, 2. See also on this subject Luther, T. xix. 
pp. 464 — 468.) In accordance with this the United 
Brethern say : " I will ever embrace thee in love and 
faith, until, when at length my lips are pale in death, 
I shall see thee bodily." "Thy eyes, thy mouth, the 
body wounded for us, on which we so firmly rely, — 
all that I shall behold.' 7 

Hence the Son of God is the darling of the human 
heart, the bridegroom of the soul, the object of a for- 
mal, personal love. " Domine Jesu, si adeo sunt 
dukes istae lachrymae, quae ex memoria et desiderio tui 
excitantur, quam duice erit gauclium quod ex manifesto, 
tui visions capietur ? Si adeo dulce est flere pro te, 
quam dulce erit gaudere de te. Sed quid hujusmodi secre- 
ta colloquia proferimus in. publicum ? Cur ineffabi- 
les et innarrabiles affectus communibus verbis conamur 
exprimere ? Inexperti talia non intelligunt. Zelotypns 
est sponsus iste. . . Delicatus est sponsus iste." — Scala 
Claustralium (sive de modo orandi. Among the 
spurious writings of St. Bernard). il Luge propter 
amorem Jesu Christi, sponsi tui, quosque eum videre 
possis." (De modo bene vivendi. Sermo x. id.) "M- 
spectum Christi, qui adhuc inadspectabilis et absens 
amorem nostrum meruit et exercuit, frequentius script- 
urae commemorant. Joh. xiv. 3. 1 Joh. iii. 1. 1 Pet. 



374 APPENDIX. 

i. 8. 1 Thess. iv. 17. Ac quis non jucundum credat 
videre corpus illv.d, cujus velut instrumento usus est 
filius Dei ad expianda peccata, et absentem tandem 
amicum salutare V' Doederlein (Inst. Theol. Chr. 1. 
ii. P. ii. C. ii. Sect. ii. § 302. Obs. 3). "Quod oculis 
corporis Christum visuri simus, dubio caret." J. Fr. 
Buddeus (Comp. Inst. Theol. Dogm. 1. ii. c. iii. § 10). 
The distinction between God with the Son. or the sen- 
suous God, and God without the Son, or God divested 
of sensuousness, is nothing further than the distinction 
between the mystical and the rational man. The rational 
man lives andthinks ; with him life is the complement of 
thought, and thought the complement of life, both theo- 
retically, inasmuch as he convinces himself of the reality 
of sensuousness through the reason itself, and practical- 
ly, inasmuch as he combines activity of life with activ- 
ity of thought. That which I have in life, I do not 
need to posit beyond life, in spirit, in metaphysical 
existence, in God : love, friendship, perception, the 
world in general, give me what thought does not, can- 
not give me, nor ought to give me. Therefore I dis- 
miss the needs of the heart from the sphere of thought, 
that reason may not be clouded by desires ; — in the 
demarcation of activities consists the wisdom of life 
and thought ; — I do not need a God who supplies by 
a mystical, imaginary physicalness or sensuosness the 
absence of the real. My heart is satisfied, before I 
enter into intellectual activity ; hence my thought is 
cold, indifferent, abstract, i. <?., free, in relation to the 
heart, which oversteps its limits, and improperly mixes 
itself with the affairs of the reason. Thus, I do not 
think in order to satisfy my heart, but to satisfy my 
reason, which is not satisfied by the heart; I think 
only in the interest of reason, from pure desire of 
knowledge, I seek in God only the contentment of the 
pure, unmixed intelligence. Necessarily, therefore, 
the God of the rational thinker is another than the 
God of the heart, which in thought, in reason, only 
seeks its own satisfaction. And this is the aim of the 



APPENDIX. 375 

mystic, who cannot endure the luminous fire of dis- 
criminating and limiting criticism ; for his mind is al- 
ways beclouded by the vapours which rise from the 
unextinguished ardour of his feelings. He never 
attains to abstract, L e., disinterested, free thought, 
and for that reason he never attains to the perception 
of things in their naturalness, truth, and reality. 

One more remark concerning the Trinity. The 
older theologians said, that the essential attributes of 
God as God were made manifest by the light of natural 
reason. But how is it that reason can know the 
Divine Being, unless it be because the divine being is 
nothing else than the objective nature of the intelli- 
gence itself? Of the Trinity, on the other hand, they 
said that it could only be known through revelation. 
Why not through reason? Because it contradicts rea- 
sons, i. e., because it does not express a want of the 
reason, but a sensuous, emotional want. In general, 
the proposition that an idea springs from revelation 
means no more than that it has come to us by the way 
of tradition. The dogmas of religion have arisen at 
certain times out of definite wants, under definite re- 
lations and conceptions ; for this reason, to the men of 
a later time, in which these relations, wants, concep- 
tions, have disappeared, they are something unintel- 
ligible, incomprehensible, only traditional, L e., re- 
vealed. The antithesis of revelation and reason re- 
duces itself only to the antithesis of history and rea- 
son, only to this, that mankind at a given time is no 
longer capable of that which at another time it was 
quite capable of ; just as the individual man does not 
unfold his powers at all times indifferently, but only 
in moments of special appeal from without or incite- 
ment from within. Thus the works of genius arise 
only under altogether special inward and outward 
conditions which cannot thus coincide more than once ; 
they are ewrfcf tey'/* £ va. " Einmal ist alles wahre nur." 
The true is born but once. Hence a man's own works 
often appear to him in later years quite strange and 



376 APPENDIX. 

incomprehensible. He no longer knows how he pro- 
duced them or could produce them, L e., he can no 
longer explain them out of himself, still less reproduce 
them. And just as it would be folly if, in riper Tear??, 
because the productions of our youth have become 
strange and inexplicable to us in their tenour and 
origin, we were to refer them to a special inspiration 
from above ; so it is folly, because the doctrines and 
ideas of a past age are no longer recognised by the 
reason of a subsequent age, to claim for them a supra* 
and extrahuman, i. e. r an imaginary, illusory origin. 

§9. 

The creation out of nothing expresses the non-divine* 
ness< non-essentiality r i.e., the nothingness of the world* 

That is created which once did not exist, which some 
time will exist no longer, to which, therefore, it is 
possible not to exist, which we can think of as not 
existing, in a word, which has not its existence in itself, 
is not necessary. " Cum enim res producantur ex suo 
non-e3se, possunt ergo absolute non-esse, adeoque im- 
plicat, quod non sunt necessarise/ 7 — Duns Scotus (ap. 
Rixner, B. ii. p. 78.) But only necessary existence is 
existence. If I am not necessary, do not feel myself 
necessary, I feel that it is all one whether I exist or 
not 7 that thus my existence is worthless, nothing. M J 
am nothing.' 7 and ,; I am not necessary/ 7 is funda- 
mentally the same thing. " Creatio non est motus ; 
sed simplicis divinae voluntatis vocatio ad esse eorum, 
quae ontea nihil fuerm it et 'Secundum se ipsa et nihil sunt 
et ex nihilo sunt" — Albcrtns M, (de mirab. scient, 
Dei P. ii. Tr. i. Qu. 4, Art. 5, memb. ii.) But the 
position that the world is not necessary, has no other 
bearing than to prove that the extra, and supramundane 
being 1 1. e*, in fact, the human being) is the only neces- 
sary, only real being. Since the one is non-essential 
and temporal, the other is necessarily the essential, 
existent, eternal. The Creation is the proof that 
God is, that he is exclusively true and real. "Sanctus 



APPENDIX. 377 

Dominus Deus omnipotens in principio, quod est in te 
in sapientia tua, quae nata est de substantia tua, feeist 
aliquid et de nihilo. Fecisti enim eoelum et terram 
non de te, nam esset aequale unigenito tuo, ac per hoc et 
tibi, et nullo modo jus him esset, ut aequale till esset, quod 
in te non esset. Et aliud praeter te non erat, unde 

faceres ea Deus Et ideo de niliilo fecisti eoelum 

et terram. 77 — Augustinus (Confessionum 1. xii. c. 7.) 
" Vere enim ipse est, quia incommutabilis est. Omnis 

enim mutatio facit non esse quod erat Ei ergo 

qui summe est, non potest esse contrarium nisi quod 
non est. — Si solus ipse incommutabilis, omnia quae fecit, 
quia ex nihilo id est ex eo quod omnino non est — fecit, 
mutabilia sunt. 77 — Augustin (de nat. boni adv. Manich 
cc. 1, 19.) " Creatura in nullo debet parificari Deo, si 
autem non habuisset initium durationis et esse, in hoc 
parificaretur Deo. 77 — (Albertus M. 1. c. Quaest. incidens 
1.) — The positive, the essential in the world is not 
that which makes it a world, which distinguishes it 
from God — this is precisely its finiteness and nothing- 
ness — but rather that in it which is not itself, which is 

God. " All creatures are a pure nothing they 

have no essential existence, for their existence hangs 
on the presence of God. If God turned himself away 
a moment, they would fall to nothing." — (Predigten 
vor u. zu Tauleri Zeiten, ed. c. p. 29. See also Au- 
gustine, e. g. Confess. 1. vii. c. 11.) This is quite 
correctly said from the stand-point of religion, for God 
is the principle of existence, the being of the world, 
though he is represented as a personal Being distinct 
from the world. The world lasts so long as God wills. 
The world is transient, but man eternal. " Quamdiu 
vult, omnia ejus virtute mament atque consistunt, et 
finis eorum in Dei voluntatem recurrit, et ejus arbitrio 
resolvuntur." — Ambrosius (Hexaemeron. 1. i. c. 5.) 
" Spiritus enim a Deo creati nunquam esse desinunt . . 
Corpora caelestia tarn diu conservantur, quamdiu Deus 
ea vult per manere" — Buddeus (Comp. 1. ii. c. ii. § 47.) 
" The dear God does not alone create, but what he 



378 APPENDIX. 

creates he keeps with his own being, until he wills that 
it shall be no longer. For the time will come when 
the sun, moon, and stars shall be no more." — Luther 
(T. ix. s. 418.) "The end will come sooner than we 
think. 7 ' — Id. (T. ix. s. 536.) By means of the creation 
out of nothing man gives himself the certainty, that 
the world is nothing, is powerless against man. " We 
have a Lord who is greater than the whole world ; we 
have a Lord so powerful, that when he only speaks all 
things are born . . . Wherefore should we fear, since 
he is favourable to us?" — Id. (T. vi. p. 293.) Identical 
with the belief in the creation out of nothing is the 
belief in the eternal life of man, in the victory over 
death, the last constraint which nature imposes on 
man — in the resurrection of the dead. " Six thousand 
years ago the world was nothing ; and who has made 
the world ? . . . The same God and Creator can also 
awake thee from the dead : he will do it, and can do 
it. ? * — Id. (T. xi. p. 426, See also 421, &c.) "We 
Christians are greater and more than all creatures, 
not in or by ourselves, but through the gift of God in 
Christ, against whom the world is nothing, and can do 
nothing.' 7 — Id. (T. xi. p. 377.) 

§10. 

The Creation in the Israelitish religion has only a par- 
ticular, egoistic aim and purport. The Israelitish reli- 
gion is the religion of the most narrow-hearted egoism,. 
Even the later Israelites, scattered throughout the 
world, persecuted and oppressed, adhered with im- 
movable firmness to the egoistic faith of their fore- 
fathers. "Every Israelitish soul by itself is, in the 
eyes of the blessed God, dearer and more precious 
than all the souls of a whole nation besides. 77 " The 
Israelites are among the nations what the heart is 
among the members. "The end in the creation of the 
world was Israel alone. The world was created for 
the sake of the Israelites; they are the fruit, other 
nations are their husks. 77 "All the heathens are no- 



APPENDIX. 379 

thing for him (God); but for the Israelites God has a 
use . . . They adore and bless the name of the holy 
and blessed God every day, therefore they are num- 
bered every hour, and made as (numerous as) the grains 
of corn/ 7 " If the Israelites were not, there would fall 
no rain on the world, and the sun would not rise but 
for their sakes." "He (God) is our kinsman, and we 
are his kindred . . . No power or angel is akin to us, 
for the Lord's portion is his people " (Deut. xxxii. 9.) 
"He who rises up against an Israelite (to injure him,) 
does the same thing as if he rose up against God." 
" If any one smite an Israelite on the cheek, it is the 
same as if he smote the cheek of the divine majesty." 
— Eisenmengers Entdecktes Judenthum, T. i. Kap. 
14.) The Christians blamed the Jews for this arro- 
gance, but only because the kingdom of God was 
taken from them and transferred to the Christians. 
Accordingly, we find the same thoughts and sentiments 
in the Christians as in the Israelites. " Know that 
God so takes thee unto himself that thy enemies are 
his enemies."- — Luther (T. vi. p. 99). " It is the 
Christians for whose sake God spares the whole world 
. . .The Father makes his sun to rise on the evil and on 
the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 
Yet this happens only for the sake of the pious and 
thankful." (T. xvi. p. 506.) "He who despises me, 
despises God." (T. xi. p. 538.) " God suffers, and 
is despised and persecuted, in us." (T. iv. p. 577.) 
Such declarations as these are, I should think, argu- 
menta ad hominem for the identity of God and man. 

§ 11. 

The idea of Providence is the religious consciousness of 
marts distinction from the brutes, from JYature in gene- 
ral. " Doth God take care for oxen ?" (1 Cor. ix 9.) 
" Nunquid curae est Deo bobus ? inquit Paulus. Ad 
nos ea cura dirigitur, non ad boves, equos, asinos, qui 
in usum nostrum sunt conditio — J. L. Vivas Val. (de 
Yeritate Fidei chr. Bas. 1544, p. 108) " Providentia 



380 APPENDIX. 

Dei in omnibus aliis ereaturis respicit ad horninem 
tanquam ad meat am steam. Multis passeribus vos 
pluris estis. Matth. x. 31. Propter peccatum hominis 
nature, subjecta est vanitati. Rom. viii. 20. n M. 
Chemnitii (Loci theol. Francof. 1608, P. i. p. 312). 
11 Xunquid enim cura est Deo de bobus? Et sicut non 
est cura Deo de bobus, ita nee de aliis irrationalibus. 
Dicit tamen scriptura (Sapient. vi. quia ipsi cura est de 
omnibus. Providentiam ergo et curam universaliter 

de cunctis, quae, condidit, habet Sed specialem 

providentiam atque curam habet de rationalibus.' 7 — 
Petrus L. (1. i. dist. 39, c. 3). Here we have again an 
example how Christian sophistry is a product of Chris- 
tian faith, especially of faith in the Bible as the word 
of God. First we read that God cares not for oxen ; 
then that God cares for everything, and therefore for 
oxen. That is a contradiction ; but the word of God 
must not contradict itself. How does faith escape 
from this contradiction ? By distinguishing between 
a general and a special providence. But general pro- 
vidence is illusory, is in truth no providence. Only 
special providence is providence in the sense of reli- 
gion. 

General providence — the providence which extends 
itself equally to irrational and rational beings, which 
makes no distinction betwen man and the lilies of the 
field or the fowls of the air, is nothing else than the 
idea of Nature — an idea which man may have without 
religion. The religious consciousness admits this 
when it says : he who denies providence abolishes reli- 
gion, places man on a level with the brutes ; — thus 
declaring that the providence in which the brutes have 
a share is in truth no providence. Providence par- 
takes of the character of its object; hence the provi- 
dence which has plants and animals for its object is in 
accordance with the qualities and relations of plants and 
animals. Providence is nothing else than the inward 
nature of a thing : this inward nature is its genius, its 
guardian spirit — the necessity of its existence. The 



APPENDIX. 381 

higher, the more precious a being is, — the more ground 
of existence it has, the more necessary it is, the less is it 
open to annihilation. Every being is necessary only 
through that by which it is distinguished from other 
beings ; its specific difference is the ground of its exist- 
ence. So man is necessary only through that by which 
he is distinguished from the brutes; hence providence is 
nothing else than man ? s consciousness of the necessity 
of his existence, of the distinction between his nature 
and that of other beings ; consequently:, that alone is 
the true providence in which this specific difference of 
man becomes an object to him. But this providence 
is special, i. e., the providence of love, for only love 
interests itself in what is special to a being. Provi- 
dence without love is a conception without basis, with- 
out reality. The truth of providence is love. God 
loves men, not brutes, not plants ; for only for man's 
sake does he perform extraordinary deeds, deeds of 
love — miracles. Where there is no community, there 
is no love. But what bond can be supposed to unite 
brutes, or natural things in general, with God ? God 
does not recognise himself in them ; for they do not 
recognise him ; — -where I find nothing of myself, how 
can I love ? " God who thus promises, does not speak 
with asses and oxen, as Paul says : Doth God take 
care for oxen? but with rational creatures made in his 
likeness, that they may live for ever with him." Luther 
(T. ii. s. 156.) God is first with himself in man ; in 
man first begins religion, providence ; for the latter is 
not something different from the former, on the con- 
trary, religion is itself the providence of man. He 
who loses religion, i, e., faith in himself, faith in man, 
in the infinite significance of his being, in the necessity 
of his existence, loses providence. He alone is for- 
saken who forsakes himself; he alone is lost, who 
despairs ; he alone is without God who is without 
faith, L e„ without courage. Wherein does religion 
place the true proof of providence ? in the phenomena 
of Nature, as they are objects to us out of religion. — ■ 



382 APPENDIX. 

in astronomy, in physics, in natural history ? No ! In 
those appearances which are objects of religion, of 
faith only, which express only the faith of religion in 
itself, L e., in the truth and reality of man, in the reli- 
gious events, means, and institutions which God has 
ordained exclusively for the salvation of man, in a 
word, in miracles ; for the means of grace, the sacra- 
ments, belong to the class of providential miracles. 
" Quamquam autem haec consideratio universae na- 
turae nos admonet de Deo .... tamen nos referamus 
initio mentam et oculos ad omnia testimonies in quibus 
se Deus ecclesiae patefecit ad edndionem ex Aegypto, 
ad vocem sonantem in Sinai, ad Christum resuscitantem 
mortuos et resuscitantum, etc. . . . Ideo semper defixae 
sint mentes in liorum testimoniorum cogitationem et his 
confirmatae articulum de Creatione meditentur, delude 
considered etiam vestigia Dei impressae naturae/ 7 
Melancthon (Loci de Creat. p. 62, ed. cit.) " Mirentur 
alii creationem, mild magis libet mirari redemptionem. 
Mirabile est, quod caro nostra et ossa nostra a Deo 
nobis sunt formata, mirahilius adhuc est, quod Ipse 
Deus caro de came nostra et os de ossibus nostris fieri 
Yoluit.— J. Gerhard (Med. s. M. 15).— u The heathens 
know God no further than that he is a Creator/ 7 — 
Luther (T.ii. p. 327.) That providence has only man 
for its essential object, is evident from this, that to 
religious faith all things and beings are created for 
the sake of man. " We are lords not only of birds, 
but of all living creatures, and all things are given for 
our service, and are created only for our sake." — Luther 
(T. ix. p. 281). But if things are created only for the 
sake of man, they are also preserved only for the sake 
of man. And if things are mere instruments of man, 
they stand under the protection of no law, they are, 
in relation to man. ivithoi ( rights* This outlawing of 
things explains miracle. 

The negation <>/ provicL nne is the negation of God. 
u Qui ergo providentiam tollit, totam Dei substantiam 
tollitet quid dicit nisi Deum non esse? .... Si non 



APPENDIX. 383 

curat humana, sive nesciens, cessat omnis causa pieta- 
tis, cum sit spes nulla salutis" — Joa. Trithemius (Tract, 
de Provid. Dei). ''Nam qui nihil aspici a Deo affir- 
mant prope est ut cui adspectum adimunt, etiam sub- 
stantiam tollant." Salvianus (1. c. 1. iv.) " Aristotle 
almost falls into the opinion that God — though he 
does not expressly name Him a fool — is such a one 
that he knows nothing of our affairs, nothing of our 
designs, understands, sees, regards nothing but him- 
self But what is such a God or Lord to us ? 

of what use is he to us? 77 Luther (in Walch's Philos. 
Lexikon, art. Vorsehung). Providence is therefore 
the most undeniable, striking proof, that in religion, 
in the nature of God himself, man is occupied only 
with himself, that the mystery of theology is anthro- 
pology, that the substance, the content of the infinite 
being, is the " finite 77 being. ;; God sees men, 77 means; 
in God man sees only himself; " God cares for man, 77 
means ; a God who is not active is no real God. 
But there is no activity without an object : it is the 
object which first converts activity from a mere power 
into real activity. This object is man. If man did 
not exist, God would have no cause for activity. 
Thus man is the motive principle, the soul of God. 
A God who does not see and hear man, who has not 
man in himself, is blind and deaf, t. e., inert, empty, 
unsubstantial. Thus the fulness of the divine nature 
is the fulness of the human ; thus the Godhead of 
God is humanity. I for myself, is the comfortless 
mystery of epicureanism, stoicism, pantheism ; God 
for* me, this is the consolatory mystery of religion, of 
Christianity. Is man for God 7 s sake, or God for 
man 7 s? It is true that in religion man exists for 
God's sake, but only because God exists for man's 
sake. I am for God because God is for me. 

Providence is identical ivith miraculous poiver, super- 
naturalistic freedom from Nature, the dominion of arbi- 
trariness over law. " Etsi (sc. Deus) sutentat naturam, 
tamen contra ordinem jussit aliquando Solem regredi 



384 APPENDIX* 

etc Ut igitur invocatio vere fieri possit, co- 

gitemus Deum sic adesse suo opificio, non, ut Stoici 
fingunt, aUtgattim secundis causis, sed sustentantem 
naturain et multa suo liberrimo consilio moderaDtem. 

Multa facit prima causa praeter secundas, 

quia est agens liberum" Melancthon (Loci de Causa 
Peccati, pp. 82, 83, ed. cit.) " Scriptura vero tradit, 
Deum in actione providentiae esse agens liberum, qui ut 
plurimum quidem ordinem sui operis servet, illi tamen 
ordini non sit alligatus, sedl) quicquid facit per causas 
secundas, illud possit etiam sine illis per se solum fa- 
cere 2) quod ex causis secundis possit alium effectum pro- 
ducere, quam ipsarum disposiiio et natura ferat 3) quod 
positis causis secundis in actu, Deus tamen effectum 

possit impedire, midare, mitigare, exasperare 

Xon igitur est connexio causarum Stoica in actionibus 
providentiae Dei." — M. Clxemnitius (I.e. pp. 316, 317.) 
" Liber rime Deus impercd naturae — Xaturam saluti ho- 

minum attemperat propter Ecclesiam Omnino 

tribuendus est Deo hie honos, quod possit et velit 
opitulari nobis, etiam cum a tota natura destituimur, 

contra seriem omnium secundarum causarum Et 

multa accidunt plurimis hominibus, in quibus mirandi 
eventusfateri eos cogunt, se a Deo sine causis secundis 
servatos esse." — C. Peucerus (de Praecip. Divinat. 
gen. Servestae, 1591, p. 44). " Ille tamen qui omnium 
est conditor, nullis instrumentis indiget. Nam si id 
continuo fit, quicquid ipse vult, velle illius erit author 
atque instrumentum : nee magis ad haec regenda 
astris indiget, quam cum luto aperuit oculos cocci, sicut 
refert historia Evangelica. Lutum enim magis vide- 
batur obturaturum oculos, quam aperturum. Sed ipse 
ostendere nobis voluit omnern naturam esse sibi instm» 
rnentum ad quidvis^ quantumcunqve alienum" — J. L. 
Vives (1. c. 102). "How is this to be reconciled? 
The air gives food and nourishment, and here stones 
or rocks flow with water ; it is a marvellous gift. 
And it is also strange and marvellous that corn grows 
out of the earth. Who has this art and this power? 



APPENDIX. 385 

God has it, who can do such unnatural things, that we 
may thence imagine what sort of a God he is and what 
sort of power he has, that we may not be terrified at 
him nor despair, but firmly believe and trust him, that 
he can make the leather in the pocket into gold, and 
can make dust into corn on the earth, and the air a 
cellar for me full of wine. He is to be trusted, as 
having such great power, and we may know that we 
have a God who can perform these deeds of skill, and 
that around him it rains and snows with miraculous 
works."— Luther (T. iii. p. 594). 

The omnipotence of Providence is the omnipotence of 
'human feeling releasing itself from all conditions and 
laws of Nature. This omnipotence is realized by prayer. 
Prayer is Almighty. " The Prayer of faith shall save 

the sick The effectual fervent prayer of a 

righteous man availeth much. Elias was a man 
subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed 
earnestly that it might not rain ; and it rained not on 
the earth by the space of three years and six months. 
And he prayed again, and the heavens gave rain and 
the earth brought forth her fruit." — James v. 15 — 18. 
" If ye have faith and doubt not, ye shall not only do 
this which is done to the fig-tree, but also if ye shall say 
unto this mountain, Be thou removed and be thou cast 
into the sea, it shall be done, and all things whatso- 
ever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive." 
— Matt. xxi. 21, 22. That under this mountain which 
the power of faith is to overcome are to be understood 
not only very difficult things — res difficillimae, as the 
exegetists say, who explain this passage as a prover- 
bial, hyperbolical mode of speech among the Jews, but 
rather things which according to Nature and reason 
are impossible, is proved by the ease of the instanta- 
neously withered fig-tree, to which the passage in 
question refers. Here indubitably is declared the 
omnipotence of prayer, of faith, before which the 
power of Nature vanishes into nothing. " Mutantur 
quoque ad joreces ea quae ex ncdurae ca/usis erant 

R 



386 APPENDIX. 

sequutura, quemadmodum in Ezechia contigit, rege 
Juda, cui, quod naturales causarum progressus mortem 
minabantur, dictum est a propheta Dei : Morieris et 
non vives ; sed is decursus naturae ad regis preces mu- 
tatus est et mutaturum se Deus praeviderat." — J. L. 
Yives (1. c. p. 132). " Saepe fatorum saevitiam lenit 
Deus, placatus piorum votis." — Melancthon (Epist. Sim. 
Grynaeo). " Cedit natura rerum precibus Moysi, Eliae, 
Elisaei, Jesaiae et omnium piorum, sicut Christus in- 
quit Matt. 21 : Omnia, quae petetis, credentes accipi- 
etis." — Id. (Loci de Creat.p. 64, ed cit.) Celsus calls on 
the Christians to aid the Emperor and not to decline 
military service. Whereupon Origen answers : "Pre- 
cibus nostris profligantes omnes bellorum excitatores 
daemonas et perturbatores pacis ac foederum plus con- 
ferimus regibus, quam qui arma gestant pro Repub- 
lican 7 — Origenes (adv. Celsum. S. Glenio int. 1. viii.) 
Human need is the necessity of the Divine Will. In 
prayer man is the active, the determining. God the 
passive, the determined. God does the will of man. 
" God does the will of those that fear him, and he 

gives his will up to ours For the text says 

clearly enough, that Lot was not to stay in all the 
plain, but to escape to the mountain. But this his 
wish God changes, because Lot fears him and prays 
to him." " And we have other testimonies in the 
Scriptures, which prove that God allows himself to be 
turned and subjects his will to our wish." " Thus it 
was according to the regular order of God's power, 
that the sun should maintain its revolution and wonted 
course ; but when Joshua in his need called on the 
Lord and commanded the sun, that it should stand 
still, it stood still at Joshua's word. How great a 
miracle this was, ask the astronomers." — Luther (T. 
ii. p. 226). " Lord, I am here and there in great need 
and danger of body and soul, and therefore want thy 
help and comfort. Item : I must have this and that; 
therefore I entreat thee that thou give it me." " He 
who so prays and perseveres unabashed, does right, 



APPENDIX. 387 

and our Lord God is well pleased with him, for He is 
not so squeamish as we men." — Id. (T. xvi. p. 150). 

§12. 

Faith is the freedom and blessedness which feeling 
finds in itself. Feeling objective to itself and active in this 
freedom , the reaction of feeling against Nature, is the 
arbitrariness of the imagination. The objects of faith 
therefore necessarily contradict Nature, necessarily con- 
tradict Reason, as that which represents the nature of 
things. u Quid magis contra fidem, quam credere 

nolle, quidquid non possit ratione attingere? Nam 

illam quae in Deum est fides, beatus papa Gregorius 
negat plane habere meritum, si ei humana ratio prae- 
beat experimentum. 7 --Bernardus (contr. Abelard. Ep. 
ad Dom. Papam Innocentium). " Partus virginis nee 
ratione colligitur, nee exemplo monstratur. Quodsi 
ratione coligitur, nonerit mirabile." -Cone. Toletan. XI. 
Art. IV. (Summa. Carranza.) " Quid autem incredi- 
bile, si contra usum originis naturalis peperit Maria et 
virgo permanet : quando contra usum naturae mare 
vidit et fugit atque in fontem suum Jordanis fluenta 
remearunt ? Non ergo excedit fidem, quod virgo 
peperit, quando legimus, quod petra vomuit aquas et in 
montis speciem maris unda solidata est. Non ergo 
excedit fidem, quod homo exivit de virgine, quando 
petra profluit, scaturivit ferrum supra aquas, ambulavit 
homo supra aquas." — Ambrosius (Epist. L. x. Ep. 81. 
Edit. Basil. Amerbach. 1492 et 1516.) "Mira suntfra- 
tres, quae de isto sacramento dicuntur ..... Haec sunt 
quae fidem necessario exigunt, rationem, omnino non 
admittunt." — Bernardus (de CoenaDom.). "Quid ergo 
hie quae ris naturae orclinem in Christi corpore, cum 
praeter ntauram sit ipse partus ex virgine." — Petrus 
Lomb. (1. iv. dist. 10, c. 2). " Laus fidei est credere 
quod est supra rationem, ubi homo ahiegat intellectum 
et omnes sensus." (Addit. Henrici de Yurimaria. Ibid, 
dist. 12, c. 5.) " All the articles of our faith appear 

foolish and ridiculous to reason." We Christians 

r 2 



388 APPENDIX. 

seem fools to the world for believing that Mary was 
the true mother of this child, and was nevertheless a 
pure virgin. For this is not only against all reason, but 
also against the creation of God, who said to Adam 
and Eve, " Be fruitful and multiply." " We ought not 
to inquire whether a thing be possible, but we should 
say, God has said it, therefore it will happen, even if 
it be impossible. For although I cannot see or under- 
stand it, yet the Lord can make the impossible possi- 
ble, and out of nothing can make all things." — Luther 
(T. xvi. pp. 148, 149, 570). "What is more miracu- 
lous than that God and man is one Person ? that he is 
the Son of God and the Son of Mary, and yet only 
one Son? Who will comprehend this mystery in all 
eternity, that God is man, that a creature is the Crea- 
tor, and the Creator a creature ?" — Id. (T. vii. p. 128). 
The essential object of faith, therefore, is miracle ; but 
not common, visible miracle, which is an object even 
to the bold eye of curiosity and unbelief in general ; not 
the appearance, but the essence of miracle ; not the 
fact, but the miraculous power, the Being who works 
miracles, who attests and reveals himself in miracle. 
And this miraculous power is to faith always present; 
even Prostestantism believes in the uninterrupted per- 
petuation of miraculous power ; it only denies the 
necessity that it should still manifest itself in special 
visible signs, for the furtherance of dogmatic ends. 
" Some have said that signs were the revelation of the 
Spirit in the commencement of Christianity and have 
now ceased. That is not correct ; for there is even 
now such a power, and though it is not used, that is 
of no importance. For we have still the power to 
perform such signs." " Now, however, that Christi- 
anity is spread abroad and made known to all the 
world, there is no need to work miracles, as in the 
times of the apostles. But if there were need for it, 
if the Gospel were oppressed and persecuted, we must 
truly apply ourselves to this, and must also work mir- 
acles."— Luther (T. xiii. pp. G42, 648). Miracle is so 



APPENDIX. 389 

essential, so natural to faith, that to it even natural 
phenomena are miracles, and not in the physical sense, 
but in the theological, supranaturalistic sense. "God in 
the beginning, said : Let the earth bring forth grass and 
herbs, &c. That same word which the Creator spoke 
brings the cherry out of the dry bough, and the cherry- 
tree out of the little kernel. It is the omnipotence of 
God which makes young fowls and geese come out of 
the eggs. Thus God preaches to us daily of the resur- 
rection of the dead, and has given us as many examples 
and experiences of this article as there are creatures." 
—Luther (T. x. p. 432. See also T. iii. pp. 586, 592, 
and Augustine, e. g. Enarr. in Ps. 90 ; Sermo ii. c. 6). 
If, therefore, faith desires and needs no special mira- 
cle, this is only because to it everything is fundamen- 
tally miracle, everything an effect of divine, miracu- 
lous power. Religious faith has no sense, no percep- 
tion for Nature. Nature, as it exists for us, has no 
existence for faith. To it the will of God is alone the 

ground, the bond, the necessity of things. " God 

could indeed have made us men, as he did Adam and 
Eve, by himself, without father and mother, as he could 
reign without princes, as he could give light without 
sun and stars, and bread without fields and ploughs 
and labour. But it is not his will to do thus." — 
Luther (T. xvi. p. 614). It is true " God employs cer- 
tain means, and so conducts his miraculous works as 
to use the service of Nature and instruments." There- 
fore we ought— truly on very natural grounds— " not to 
despise the means and instruments of Nature." "Thus 
it is allowable to use medicine, nay, it ought to be 
used, for it is a means created in order to preserve 
health. 7 '— Luther (T. i. p. 508). But— and that alone 
is decisive — it is not necessary that I should use na- 
tural means in order to be cured ; I can be cured im- 
mediately by God. What God ordinarily does by 
means of Nature, he can also do without, nay, in oppo- 
sition to Nature, and actually does it thus, in extraor- 
dinary cases, when he will. " God, p? says Luther in 



390 APPENDIX. 

the same place, ki could indeed easily have preserved 
Noah and the animals through a whole year without 
food, as he preserved Moses, Elijah, and Christ forty 
days without any food." Whether he does it often or 
seldom is indifferent : it is enough if he only does it 
once; what happens once can happen innumerable times. 
A single miracle has universal significance — the signi- 
ficance of an example. u This deed, the passage 
through the Red Sea, happened as a figure and example, 
to show us that it will be so with us." — Luther (T. iii. 
p. 596). u These miracles are written for us, who are 
chosen. " — lb. (T. ix. p. 142). The natural means 
which God employs when he does no miracle, have no 
more significance than those which he employs when 
he performs miracles. If the animals, God so willing 
it. can live as well without food as with it food is in 
itself as unnecessary for the preservation of life, as in- 
different, as non-essential, as arbitrary, as the clay with 
which Christ anointed the eyes of the blind man to 
whom he restored sight, as the staff with which Moses 
divided the sea (" God could have done it just as well 
without the staff"). u Faith is stronger than heaven 
and earth, or all creatures." "Faith turns water into 
stones ; out of fire it can bring water, and out of water 
fire. 7 '— Luther (T. iii. pp. 564. 565). That is to say, 
for faith there exists no limit, no law, no necessity, no 
Nature : there exists only the will of God. against 
which all things and powers are nothing. If there- 
fore the believer, when in sickness and distress, has 
recourse notwithstanding to natural means, he only 
follows the voice of his natural reason. The one means 
of cure which is congruous with faith, which does not 
contradict faith, which is not thrust upon it, whether 
consciously and voluntarily or not, from without, — 
the one remedy foi* all evil and misery is prayer : for 
"prayer is almighty." — Luther (T. iv. p. 27). Why 
then use a natural means also ? For even in case of 
its application, the effect which follows is by no means 
its own, but the effeet of the supernatural will of God, 



APPENDIX. 391 

or rather the effect of faith, of prayer ; for prayer, 
faith determines the will of God. " Thy faith hath 
saved thee." Thus the natural means which faith re- 
cognises in practice it nullifies in theory, since it 
makes the effect of such means an effect of God,— 4. e., 
an effect which could have taken place just as well 
without this means. The natural effect is therefore 
nothing else than a circumstantial, covert, concealed 
miracle ; a miracle however which has not the ap- 
pearance of a miracle, but can only be perceived as 
such by the eyes of faith. Only in expression, not in 
fact, is there any difference between an immediate and 
mediate, a miraculous and natural operation of God. 
When faith makes use of a natural means, it speaks 
otherwise than it thinks ; when it supposes a miracle 
it speaks as it thinks, but in both cases it thinks the 
same. In the mediate agency of God faith is in dis- 
union with itself, for the senses here deny what faith 
affirms ; in miracle, on the contrary, it is one with 
itself, for there the appearance coincides with the re- 
ality, the senses with faith, the expression with the 
fact. Miracle is the terminus technicus of faith. 

§13. 

The Resurrection of Christ is bodily, i. e., personal 
immortality, presented as a sensible indubitable fact. 

" Resurrexit Christus, absoluta res est. — Ostendit se 
ipsum discipulis et fidelibus suis : contrectata est solidi- 
tas corporis. . . Confrmata fides est non solum in cordi- 
bus, sed etiam in ocidis hominum." — Augustinus (Ser- 
mones ad Pop. S. 242, c. 1. S. 361, c. 8. See also on 
this subject Melancthon, Loci : de Resurr. Mort.) " The 
philosophers . . . held that by death the soul was re- 
leased from the body, and that after it was thus set 
free from the body, as from a prison, it came into the 
assembly of the gods, and was relieved from all cor- 
poreal burthens. Of such an immortality the philo- 
sophers allowed men to dream, though they did not 
hold it to be certain, nor could defend it. But the 



392 APPENDIX. 

Holy Scriptures teach of the resurrection and eternal 
life in another manner, and place the hope of it so 
certainly before our eyes, that we cannot doubt it." — 
Luther (T. i. p. 549.) 

§ 14. 

Christianity made man an extramundane, supernatural 
being. " We have here no abiding city, but we seek 
one to come." — Heb. xiii. 14. " Whilst we are at 
home in the body, we are absent from the Lord." — 2 
Cor. v. 6. "If in this body, which is properly our 
own, we are strangers, and our life in this body is no- 
thing else than a pilgrimage ; how much more then 
are the possessions which we have for the sake of the 
body, such as fields, houses, gold, <fec, nothing else 
than idle, strange things, to be used as if we were on 
a pilgrimage t 1 " Therefore we must in this life live 
like strangers until we reach the true fatherland, and 
receive a better life which is eternal." — Luther (T. ii. 
pp. 240, 370, a.) " Our conversation (*o%iTe V pa, civitas 
aut jus civitatis) is in heaven, from whence also we 
look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall 
change our vile body that it may be like unto his glo- 
rious body, according to the working whereby he is 
able even to subdue all things unto himself."- — Phil, 
iii. 20, 21. " JVeque mundus cjenerat hominem, neque 
mundi homo pars est. — Lactantius (Div. Inst. 1. ii. c. 
6.) " Coelum de mundo : homo supra mundum" — 
Ambrosius (Epist. 1. vi. Ep. 38, ed. cit.) "Agnosce 
o homo dignitatem tuam, agnosce gloriam conditionis 
humanae. Est enim tibi cum mundo corpus . . sed est 
tibi etiam sublimius aliquid, nee omn'rno comparand)/* 
es catteris creaturis." — Bernards (Opp. Basil. 1552, p. 
79.) "At Christianus . . . ita supra totum mundum 
ascendit, nee consistit in coeli convcxis, sed transccn- 
sis mente locis supercoelestibus ductu <livini spiritus 
velut jam extra mundum rapt us offert Deo preces." — 
Origenes (contra Celsum. ed Hoeschelio, p. 370). 
" Totus quidem iste mundus ad unius animae pretium 



APPENDIX. 393 

aestimari non potest. Non enim pro toto mundo Dens 
animam suam dare voluit, quam pro anima humana 
dedit. Sublimius est ergo aniniae pretiuin, quae non 
nisi sanguine Christi redimi potest." — Medit. devotiss. 
c. ii. (Among the spurious writings of St. Bernard.) 
" Sapiens anima .... Deum tantummodo sapiens ho- 
minem in homine exuit, Deoque plene et in omnibus 
affeeta, omnem infra Deum creaturam non aliter quam 
Deus attendit. Relicto ergo corpore et eorporeis 
omnibus curis et impedimentis omnium quae sunt 
praeter Deum obliviscitur, nihilque praeter Deum at- 
tendens quasi se solum, solumque Deum existimans," 
etc.-— De Nat. et Dign. Amoris Divini ec. 14, 15. (lb.) 
" Quid agis frater in saeculo, qui major es mundo ?" — 
Hieronymus (ad Heliod. de Laude Yitae solit.) 

§15. 

Tke celibate and monachism— of course only in their 
original, religious significance and form— are sensible 
manifestations, necessary consequences, of the supranatu- 
ralistic, extramundane character of Christianity. It is 
true that they also contradict Christianity ; the reason 
of this is shown by implication in the present work ; 
but only because Christianity is itself a contradiction. 
They contradict exoteric, practical, but not esoteric, 
theoretical Christianity ; they contradict Christian 
love so far as this love relates to man, but not Chris- 
tian faith, not Christian love so far as it loves man 
only for God's sake. There is certainly nothing con- 
cerning celibacy and monachism in the Bible ; and 
that is very natural. In the beginning of Christianity 
the great matter was the recognition of Jesus as the 
Christ, the Messiah— the conversion of the heathens 
and Jews. And this conversion was the more pressing, 
the nearer the Christians supposed the day of judg- 
ment and the destruction of the world ; pericidem in 
mora. There was not time or opportunity for a life 
of quietude, for the contemplation of monachism. 
Hence there necessarily reigned at that time a more 

r3 



394 APPENDIX. 

practical and even liberal sentiment than at a later 
period, when Christianity had attained to worldly do- 
minion, and thus the enthusiasm of proselytism was 
extinguished. " Apostoli (says the Church, quite cor- 
rectly : Carranza, 1. c. p. 256) cum fides inciperet, ad 
fiddium imbecillitatem se magis demittebant, cum 
autem evangelii praedicatio sit magis ampliata, opor- 
tet et Pontifices ad perfectam continentiam vitam 
suam dirigere." When once Christianity realized 
itself in a worldly form it must also necessarily de- 
velop the supranaturalistic, supramundane tendency of 
Christianity into a literal separation from the world. 
And this disposition to separation from life, from the 
body, from the world, — this first hypercosmic then 
anti-cosmic tendency, is a genuinely biblical disposi- 
tion and spirit. In addition to the passages already 
cited, and others universally known, the following 
may stand as examples ; " He that hateth his life in 
this world, shall keep it unto life eternal." "I know 
that in me, that is, in nw flesh, dwelleth no good thing." 
— Rom. vii. 18. ( 4 'Veteres enim omnis vitiositatis in 
agendo origenes ad corpus referebant." — J. G. Rosen- 
mueller Scholia.) " Forasmuch then as Christ hath 
suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with 
the same mind ; for he that hath suffered in the flesh 
hath ceased from sin." — 1 Pet. iv. 1. "I have a de- 
sire to depart, and to be with Christ." — Phil. i. 23. 
" We are confident and willing rather to be absent 
from the body and present with the Lord." — 2 Cor. v. 
8. Thus, according to these passages, the partition- 
wall between God and man is the body (at least the 
fleshly, actual body) ; thus the body as a hindrance to 
union with God is something worthless, to be denied. 
That by the world, which is denied in Christianity, is 
by no means to be understood a life of mere sensuality, 
but the real objective world, is to be inferred in a 
popular manner from the belief that at the advent of 
the Lord, i. e., the consummation of the Christian re- 
ligion, heaven and earth will pass away. 



APPENDIX. 395 

The difference between the belief of the Christians 
and that of the heathen philosophers as to the destruc- 
tion of the world is not to be overlooked. The Chris- 
tian destruction of the world is only a crisis of faith, 
— the separation of the Christian from all that is anti- 
christian, the triumph of faith over the world, a judg- 
ment of God, an anti-cosmical, supernaturalistic act. 
" But the heavens and the earth which are now, by the 
same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against 
the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men." 
- — 2 Pet. iii. 7. The heathen destruction of the world, 
is a crisis of the Cosmos itself, a process which takes 
place according to law, which is founded in the con- 
stitution of Nature. " Sic origo mundi, non minus 
solem et lunam et vices siderum et animalium ortus, 
quam quibus mutarentur terrena, continuit. In his 
fuit inundatio, quae non secus quam hiems, quam aestas, 
lege mandi venit. 77 — Seneca (Nat. Qu. 1. iii. c. 29). It 
is the principle of life immanent in the world, the 
essence of the world itself, which evolves this crisis 
out of itself. " Aqua et ignis terrenis dominantur. Ex 
Ms ortus et ex his interitus est" — (Ibid. c. 28.) " Quid- 
quid est, non erit ; nee peribit, sed resolvetur. 77 — (Idem 
Epist. 71.) The Christians excluded themselves from 
the destruction of the world. " And he shall send his 
angels with a great sound of a trumpet ; and they shall 
gather together his elect from the four winds, from one 
end of heaven to the other." — Matt. xxiv. 31. "But 
there shall not a hair of your head perish. . . And then 
shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with 
power and great glory. And when these things begin 
to come to pass, then look up and lift up your heads ; 
for your redemption draweth nigh."' — Luke xxi. 18, 
27, 28. " Watch ye therefore and pray always, that 
ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things 
that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son 
of Man. 77 — lb. 36. The heathens, on the contrary, 
identified their fate with the fate of the world. "Hoc 
universum, quod omnia divina humanaque compleeti- 



396 APPENDIX. 

tur. . . dies aliquis dissipabit et in confusionem veterem 
tenebrasque demerget. Eat nunc aliquis et singulas 
comphret animas. Quis tarn superbae impotentisque 
arrogantiae est, ut in hac naturae necessitate, omnia 
ad eundem finem revoeantis, se unum ac suos seponi 
vdit." Seneca (Cons, ad Polyb. cc. 20, 21). "Ergo 
quandoque erit terminus rebus humanis. . . . Non muri 
quenquam, non turres tuebuntur. Nonproderunt templa 
sujyplicibusJ' — (Xat. Qu. L. iii. c. 29.) Thus here we 
have again the characteristic distinction between hea- 
thenism and Christianity. The heathen forgot him- 
self in the world, the Christian forgot the world in 
himself. And as the heathen identified his destruction 
with the destruction of the world, so he identified his 
immortality with the immortality of the world. To 
the heathen, man was a common, to the Christian, a 
select being ; to the latter immortality was a privilege 
of man, to the former a common good which he vin- 
dicated to himself only because, and in so far as, he 
assigned to other beings a share in it also. The 
Christians expected the destruction of the world im- 
mediately, because the Christian religion has in it no 
cosmical principle of development : — all which develop- 
ed itself in Christendom developed itself only in contra- 
diction with the original nature of Christianity ; — 
because by the existence of God in the flesh, i. e., by 
the immediate identity of the species with the indi- 
vidual, everything was attained, the thread of history 
was cut short, no other thought of the future remained 
than the thought of a repetition, of the second coming 
of the Lord. The heathens, on the contrary, placed 
the destruction of the world in the distant future, be- 
cause, living in the contemplation of the universe, 
they did not set heaven and earth in motion on their 
own account. — because they extended and freed their 
self-consciousness by the consciousness of the species, 
placed immortality only in the perpetuation of the 
species, and thus did not reserve the future to them- 
selves, but left it to the coming generations. " Veniet 



APPENDIX. 397 

tempus quo posteri nostri tarn aperta nos nescisse mir- 
entur." — Seneca (Nat. Qu. 1. vii. c. 25). He who places 
immortality in himgelf abolishes the principle of his- 
torical development. The Christians did indeed, ac- 
cording to Peter, expect a new heaven and a new 
earth. But with this Christian, i. e., superterrestrial 
earth, the theatre of history is for ever closed, the end 
of the actual world is come. The heathens, on the 
contrary, set no limits to the development of the Cos- 
mos ; they supposed the world to be destroyed only to 
arise again renovated as a real world ; they granted 
it eternal life. The Christian destruction of the world 
was a matter of feeling, an object of fear and longing ; 
the heathen, a matter of reason, an inference from the 
contemplation of nature. 

Unspotted Virginity is the principle of Salvation, the 
principle of the regenerate Christian icorld. " Virgo 
genuit miindi scdutem; virgo peperit vitam universorum. 
. . . Virgo portavit, quern miindus iste capere aut sus- 
tinere non potest. . . Per virum autem et mulierem caro 
ejecta de paradiso : per virginemjwieta est Deo." — Am- 
brosius (Ep. L. x. Ep. 82). " Jure laudatur bona uxor, 
sed melius pia virgo praefertur, dicente Apostolo. (1 Cor. 
vii.) Bonum conjugium, per quod est inventa posteri- 
tas successionis humanae ; sed melius virginitas, per 
quam regni coelestis haereditas acquisita et coelestium 
meritorum reperta successio. Per mulierem cura suc- 
cessit : per virginem solus evenit" (Id Ep. 81.) "Casti- 
tas jungit hominem coelo. . . . Bona est castitas con- 
jugalis, sed melior est continentia vidualis. Optima 
vero integritas virginalis." — De modo bene vivendi. 
Sermo 22. (Among the spurious writings of Bernard.) 
"Pulchritudinem hominis non concupiscas" (ibid. S. 23). 
"Fornicatio major est omnibus peccatis. . . . Audi beati 
Isidori verba : Fornicatione coinquinari deterius est 
omni peccato." (Ibid.) " Virginitas cui gloriae merito 
non praefertur ? Angelicae ? Angelus habet virgini- 
tatem, sed non carnem, sane felicior, quam fortior in 
hac parte. 77 — Bernardus (Ep. 113, ad Sophiam Vir- 



398 APPENDIX. 

ginem). " Memento semper, quod paradisi colonum de 
possessione sua mul'ier ejecerit — Hieronymus (Ep. Ne- 
potiano). B In paradiso virginitas conversabatur. . . . 
Ipse Christus virginitatis gloria non modo ex patre 
sine initio et sine duorum concursu genitus, sed et homo 
secundum nos factus, super nos ex virgine sine alieno 
consortio incarnatus est. Et ipse virginitatem veram 
et perfectam esse, in se ipso demonstravit. Unde hanc 
nobis legem non statuit (non enim omnes capiunt verbum 
hoc, ut ipse dixit) sed opere nos erudivit. r < — Joan. Da- 
masc. (Orthod. fidei, 1. iv. c. 25). 

Now if abstinence from the satisfaction of the sensual 
impulse, the negation of difference of sex and conse- 
quently of sexual love, — for what is this without the 
other ? — is the principle of the Christian heaven and 
salvation : then necessarily the satisfaction of the 
sexual impulse, sexual love, on which marriage is 
founded, is the source of sin and evil. And so it is 
held. The mystery of original sin is the mystery of 
sexual desire. All men are conceived in sin because 
they were conceived with sensual, i. e., natural pleas- 
ure. The act of generation, as an act of sensual en- 
joyment, is sinful. Sin is propagated from Adam down 
to us, simply because its propagation is the natural act 
of generation. This is the mystery of Christian or- 
iginal sin. ' ; Atque hie quam alienus a vero sit, etiam 
hie reprehenditur, quod volnptatem in homine Deo an- 
thore creatam asserit principaliter. Sed hoc divinae 
scriptura redarguit, quae serpentis insidiis atque ille- 
cebris infusam Adae atque Evae voluptatem docet, si- 
quidem ipse serpens voluptas sit. . . . Quomodo igitur 
voluptas ad paradisum revocare nos potest, quae sola 
nos paradiso exuit?" — Ambrosius (Ep. L. x. Ep. 82). 
" Voluptas ipsa sine culpa nullatenus esse potest. " — 
Petrus L. (1. iv. dist. 81, c. 5). " Omnes in peccatis 
nati sumus, et ex oarnis delectatione concepti culpam 
ori'j-inalem nobiscum traximus." — (Jregorius (Petrus 
L.l. ii. dist. 30, c. 2). "Firmissime tene et nullatenus 
dubites, oinnem hominem, qui per concubitum viri et 



APPENDIX. 399 

mulieris concipitur, cum originali peccato nasci. . . Ex 
his datur intelligi, quid sit originate peccatum, scl. 
vitiura concupiscent iae, quod in omnes concupiscential- 
iter natos per Adam intra* it." (Ibid. c. 3, see also 
dist. 31, c. 1.) 'Teccati causa ex came est." — Ambro- 
sius (ibid.) u Christus peccatum non habet, nee origin- 
ale traxit, nee suum addidit : extra voluptatem carnalis 
libidinis venit, non ibi fuit complexus maritalis... Omnis 
generatus, damnatus" — Augustinus (Serm. ad pop. S. 
294, cc. 10, 16). " Homo natus de muliere et ob hoc 
cum reatu — Bernardus (de consid. 1. ii.) " Peccatum 
quomodo non fuit, ubi libido non defuit ? . . . Quo pacto, 
inquam, aut sanctus asseretur conceptus, qui de spiritu 
s. non est, ne dicam de peccato est?" — Id. (Epist. 174. 
Edit, cit.) ''All that is born into the world of man and 
woman is sinful, under God's anger and curse, condem- 
ned to death. 77 " All men born of a father and mother are 
children of wrath by nature, as St. Paul testifies, Ephes. 
ii." " We have by nature a tainted, sinful conception 
and birth. "— Luther (T. xvi. 246, 573). It is clear 
from these examples, that " carnal intercourse 77 — even 
a kiss is carnal intercourse — is the radical sin, the ra- 
dical evil of mankind ; and consequently the basis of 
marriage, the sexual impulse, honestly outspoken, is a 
product of the devil. It is true that the creature as 
the work of God is good, but it has long ceased to 
exist as it was created. The devil has alienated the 
creature from God and corrupted it to the very foun- 
dation. " Cursed be the ground for thy sake. 77 The 
fall of the creature, however, is only an hypothesis by 
which faith drives from its mind the burdensome, dis- 
quieting contradiction, that Nature is a product of 
God, and yet, as it actually is, does not harmonize with 
God, i. e., with the Christian sentiment. 

Christianity certainly did not pronounce the flesh 
as flesh, matter as matter, to be something sinful, im- 
pure ; on the contrary, it contended vehemently against 
the heretics who held this opinion and rejected mar- 
riage. (See for example Augustin. Contra Faustum, 



400 APPENDIX. 

1. 29, c. 4. 1. 30, c. 6. Clemens Alex. Stromata, lib. in. 
and Bernard : Super Cantica, Sermo, 66.) But quite 
apart from the hatred to heretics which so inspired 
the holy Christian church and made it so politic, this 
protest rested on grounds which by no means involved 
the recognition of Nature as such, and under limita- 
tions, i. e., negations, which make the recognition of 
Xature merely apparent and illusory. The distinction 
between the heretics and the orthodox is only this, 
that the latter said indirectly, covertly, secretly, what 
the former declared plainly, directly, but for that very 
reason offensively. Pleasure is not separable from 
matter. Material pleasure is nothing further, so to 
speak, than the joy of matter in itself, matter proving 
itself by activity. Every joy is self-activity, every 
pleasure a manifestation of force, energy. Every 
organic function is, in a normal condition, united with 
enjoyment ; even breathing is a pleasurable act, which 
is not perceived as such only because it is an uninter- 
rupted process. He therefore who declares genera- 
tion, fleshly intercourse, as such, to be pure, but fleshly 
intercourse united with sensual pleasure to be a conse- 
quence of original sin and consequently itself a sin, 
acknowledges only the dead, not the living flesh — he 
raises a mist before us, he condemns, rejects the act of 
generation, and matter in general, though under the 
appearance of not rejecting it, of acknowledging it. 
The unhypocritical honest acknowledgment of sensual 
life is the acknowledgment of sensual pleasure. In brief, 
he who. likethe Bible, like the Church, does not acknow- 
ledge fleshly pleasure — that, be it understood, which 
is natural, normal, inseparable from life — does not 
acknowledge the flesh. That which is not recognised 
as an end in itself (it by no means follows that it 
should be the ultimate end) is in truth not recognised 
at all. Thus tie who allows me wine only as medicine, 
forbids me the enjoyment of wine. Let not the liberal 
supply of wine at the wedding at Cana be urged. For 
that scene transports us, by the metamorphosis of water 



APPENDIX. 401 

into wine, beyond Nature into the region of superna- 
turalism. Where, as in Christianity, a supernatural, 
spiritual body is regarded as the true, eternal body, 
i. e., a body from which all objective, sensual im- 
pulses, all flesh, all nature, is removed, there real, L e., 
sensual, fleshly matter is denied, is regarded as worth- 
less, nothing. 

Certainly Christianity did not make celibacy a law 
(save at a later period for the priests). But for the 
very reason that chastity, or rather privation of mar- 
riage, of sex, is the highest, the most transcendent, 
supernaturalistic, heavenly virtue, it cannot and must 
not be lowered into a common object of duty ; it 
stands above the law, it is the virtue of Christian 
grace and freedom. " Christus hortatur idoneos ad 
coelibatum, ut donum recte tueantur ; idem Christus 
iis, qui puritatem extra canjuginm non retinent, prae- 
cipit, ut pure in conjugio vivant." — Melancthon. (Re- 
sponsio ad Colonienses. Declam. T. iii.) " Virginitas 
non est jussa, sed admonita, quia nimis est excelsa" 
De modo bene viv. — (Sermo 21.) " Et qui matrimo- 
nio jungit virginem suam, benefacit, et qui non jungit, 
melius facit. Quod igitur bonum est, non vitandum 
est et quod est melius eligendum est. Itaque non im- 
ponitur, sed proponitur. Et ideo bene Apostolus 
dixit : De virginibus autem praeceptum non habeo, 
consilium autem do. Ubi praeceptum est, ibi lex est, 

ubi consilium, ibi gratia est Praeceptum enim 

castitatis est, consilium integritatis Sed nee 

vidua praeceptum accipit, sed consilium. Consilium 
autem non semel datum, sed saepe repetitum"- — Anibro- 
sius (Liber, de viduis). That is to say : celibacy 
abstinence from marriage, is no law in the common or 
Jewish sense, but a law in the Christian sense, or for 
the Christian sentiment, which takes Christian virtue 
and perfection as the rule of conscience, as the ideal 
of feeling, — no despotic but a friendly law, no public 
but a secret, esoteric law — a mere counsel, i. e., a law 
which does not venture to express itself as a law, a 



402 APPENDIX. 

law for those of finer feelings, not for the great mass. 
Thou mayst marry ; yes indeed ! without any fear of 
committing a sin, i. e., a public, express, plebeian sin ; 
but thou dost all the better if thou dost not marry ; 
meanwhile this is only my undictatorial, friendly ad- 
vice. Omnia licent, sed omnia rum expediimt. What 
is allowed in the first member of the sentence is re- 
tracted in the second. Licet, says the man ; non ex- 
pedite says the Christian. But only that which is good 
for the Christian is for the man, so far as he desires to 
be a Christian, the standard of doing and abstaining. 
" Quae non expediunt, nee licent" — such is the conclusion 
arrived at by the sentiment of Christian nobility. 
Marriage is therefore only an indulgence to the weak- 
ness, or rather the strength of the flesh, a taint of na- 
ture in Christianity, a falling short of the genuine, 
perfect Christian sentiment ; being, however, never- 
theless good, laudable, even holy, in so far as it is the 
best antidote to fornication. For its own sake, as the 
self-enjoyment of sexual love, it is not acknowledged, 
not consecrated ; — thus the holiness of marriage in 
Christianity is only an ostensible holiness, only illu- 
sion, for that which is not acknowledged for its own 
sake is not acknowledged at all, while yet there is a 
deceitful show of acknowledgment. Marriage is sanc- 
tioned not in order to hallow and satisfy the flesh, but 
to restrict the flesh, to repress it, to kill it — to drive 
Beelzebub out by Beelzebub. u Quae res et viris et 
feminis omnibus adest ad matrimonium et stuprum? 
Commixtio carnis scilicet, cujus concupiscentiam Do- 
minus stupro adaequavit. . . . Ideo Virginia principalis 
sanctitas, quia caret stupri afnnitati." — Tertullianus 
(de Exhort. Cast. c. 9). ;< Et de ipso conjugis melius 
aliquid, quam concessisti, monuisti. w — Augustinus 
(Confess, x. c. 30). " "It is better to marry than to 
burn*" — 1 Cor. vii. <). But how much better is it, says 
Tertullian, developing this text, neither to marry nor 
to burn. . . . " Possum diccre, quod permittitur bonum 
non est" — (ad Uxorem, 1. i. c. 3) " De minoribus bonis 



APPENDIX. 403 

est conjugiam, quod non meretur palinam, sed est in 
remedium. . . . Prima institutio habuit praeceptum,, 
secunda indulgentiam. Didicimus enim ab Apostolo, 
humano generi propter vitandam fornicationem in- 
dultum esse conjugium." — Petrus Lomb. (1. iv. dist. 
26. c. 2). " The Master of the Sentences says rightly, 
that in Paradise marriage was ordained as service, 
but after sin as medicine. " — Luther (T. i. p. 349). 
" Where marriage and virginity are compared, cer- 
tainly chastity is a nobler gift than marriage." — Id. 
(T. i. p. 319). " Those whom the weakness of nature 
does not compel to marriage, but who are such that 
they can dispense with marriage, these do rightly to 
abstain from marriage. 77 — Id. (T. v. p. 538). Christian 
sophistry will reply to this, that only marriage which 
is not Christian, only that which is not consecrated by 
the spirit of Christianity, i. e., in which Nature is not 
veiled in pious images, is unholy. But if marriage, if 
Nature is first made holy by relation to Christ, it is 
not the holiness of marriage which is declared, but of 
Christianity ; and marriage, Nature, in and by itself, 
is unholy. And what is the semblance of holiness with 
which Christianity invests marriage, in order to be- 
cloud the understanding, but a pious illusion ? Can 
the Christian fulfil his marriage duties without sur- 
rendering himself, willingly or not, to the passion of 
love? Yes indeed. The Christian has for his object 
the replenishing of the Christian Church, not the 
satisfaction of love. The end is holy, but the means 
in itself unholy. And the end sanctifies, exculpates 
the means. " Conjugalis concubitus generandi gratia 
non habet culpam. ;? Thus the Christian, at least the 
true Christian, denies, or at least is bound to deny, 
Nature, while he satisfies it ; he does not wish for, he 
rather contemns the means in itself, he seeks only the 
end in abstracto ; he does with religious, supranatural- 
istic horror, what he does, though against his will, 
with natural, sensual pleasure. The Christian does 
not candidly confess his sensuality, he denies Nature 



404 APPENDIX. 

before his faith, and his faith before Nature, i. e., he 
publicly disavows what he privately does. Oh how 
much better, truer, purer-hearted in this respect were 
the heathens, who made no secret of their sensuality, 
than the Christians who, while gratifying the flesh, at 
the same time deny that they gratify it ! To this day 
the Christians adhere theoretically to their heavenly 
origin and destination : to this day, out of supranatu- 
ralistic affectation, they deny their sex, and turn away 
with mock modesty from every sensuous picture, every 
naked statue, as if they were angels : to this day they 
repress, even by legal force, every open-hearted, in- 
genuous self-confession even of the most uncorrupt 
sensuality, only stimulating by this public prohibition 
the secret enjoyment of sensuality. What then, speak- 
ing briefly and plainly, is the distinction between 
Christians and heathens in this matter ? The heathens 
confirmed, the Christians contradicted their faith by 
their lives. The heathens do what they mean to do, 
the Christians what they do not mean : the former, 
where they sin, sin with their conscience, the latter 
against their conscience ; the former sin simply, the 
latter doubly ; the former from hyperthrophy, the latter 
from atrophy of the flesh. The specific crime of the 
heathens is the ponderable, palpable crime of licen- 
tiousness, that of the Christians is the imponderable, 
theological crime of hypocrisy, — that hypocrisy of 
which Jesuitism is indeed the most striking, world- 
historical, but nevertheless only a particular mani- 
festation* " Theology makes sinners/' says Luther — 
Luther, whose positive qualities, his heart and under- 
standing, so far as they applied themselves to natural 
things, were not perverted by theology. And Montes- 
quieu gives the best commentary on this saying of 
Luther's when lie says : "La devotion trouve, pour faire 
de mauvaises actions, dea raisons, qu ? un simple honmte 
homme ne saurait trouver." (Pensees Diverses.) 



APPENDIX. 405 

§ 16. 

The Christian heaven is Christian truth. That which 
is excluded from heaven is excluded from true Christian- 
ity* In heaven the Christian is free from that which he 
wishes to he free from here— free from sexual impulse, 
free from matter , free from Nature in general. "In the 
resurrection they neither marry nor are given in 
marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven/' — 
Matt. xxii. 30. " Meats for the belly, and the belly 
for meats ; but God shall destroy (*«* apy^si make use- 
less) both it and them."— 1 Cor." vi. 13. " Now this I 
say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the 
kingdom of heaven, neither doth corruption inherit 
incorruption." — lb. xv. 50. "They shall hunger no 
more, neither thirst any more ; neither shall the sun 
light on them, nor any heat." Rev. vii. 16. " And there 
shall be no night there ; and they need no candle, 
neither light of the sun." — lb. xxii. 5. " Comedere, 
bibere, vigilare, dormire, quiescere, laborare et caeteris 
necessitaiibus naturae subjacere, vere magna miseria 
est et afflictio homini devoto, qui libenter esset absolutus 
et liber ab omni peccato. Utinam non essent istae 
necessitates, sed solum spirituales animae refectiones. 
quas heu! satis raro degustamus." — Thomas a K. (de 
imit. 1. i. cc. 22, 25. See also on this subject S. Gre- 
gorii Nyss. de anima et resurr. Lipsiae, 1837. pp. 98, 
144, 153). It is true that the Christian immortality, 
in distinction from the heathen, is not the immortality 
of the soul, but that of the flesh, that is, of the whole 
man. "Scientia immortalis visa est res illis (the 
heathen philosophers) atque incorruptibilis. Nos autem, 
quibus divina revelatio illuxit . . . novimus, non solum 
mentem, sed affectus perpurcjatos, neque animam tantum, 
sed etiam corpus ad immortalitatem assumptum iri suo 
tempore." — Baco de Verul. (de augm. Scien. 1. i.) On 
this account, Celsus reproached the Christians with a 
desiderium corporis. But this immortal body is, as 
has been already remarked, an immaterial, i. e., a 



406 APPENDIX. 

thoroughly fanciful, subjective body — a body which is 
the direct negation of the real, natural body. The ideal 
on which this faith hinges is not the recognition, or 
glorification of Nature, of matter as such, but rather 
the reality of the emotive imagination, the satisfaction 
of the unlimited, supranaturalistic desire of happiness, 
to which the actual, objective body is a limitation. 

As to what the angels strictly are, whom heavenly 
souls will be like, the Bible is as far from giving us 
any definite information as on other weighty subjects ; 
it only calls them Tv^ara spirits, and declares them 
to be higher than men. The later Christians expressed 
themselves more definitely on this subject ; more de- 
finitely, but variously. Some assigned bodies to the 
angels, others not ; a difference which, however, is 
only apparent, since the angelic body is only a phan- 
tasmal one. But concerning the human body of the 
resurrection, they had not only different, but even 
opposite, conceptions ; indeed, these contradictions lay 
in the nature of the case, necessarily resulted from the 
fundamental contradiction of the religious conscious- 
ness which, as we have shown, exhibits itself in the in- 
compatible propositions, that the body which is raised 
is the same individual body which we had before the 
resurrection, and that nevertheless it is another. It 
is the same body even to the hair, " cum nee periturus 
sit capillus, ut ait Dominus : Capillus de capite vestro 
non peribit." (Augustinus und Petrus L. 1. iv. dist. 
44, c. 1.) Nevertheless it is the same in such a way, 
that everything burdensome, everything contradictory 
to transcendental feeling, is removed. " Immo sicut 
dicit Augustinus : Detrahentur vitia et remanebit na- 
tura. Superexcresoentia wutem (xyppiUorum et unguium 
est de superjluihitc < t vitio ncfurae. Si cnira non peccasset 
liorno, crescerenl ungues et capQH ejus vsquead determin- 
atom (jiiuidit'iiciu. sicut in leonibus ct avibus." (Addit. 
ITenrici ab Yurimaria ibid. Edit. Basiliae, 1513.) 
What a specific, naive, inirenuous, confident, harmoni- 
ous faith ! The risen body, as the same and yet an- 



APPENDIX. 407 

other, a new body, has hair and nails, otherwise it 
would be a maimed body, deprived of an essential 
ornament, and consequently the resurrection would 
not be a restitutio in integrum ; moreover they are the 
same hair and nails as before, but yet so modified that 
they are in accordance with the body. Why do not 
the believing theologians of modern times enter into 
such specialities as occupied the older theologians? 
Because their faith is itself only general, indefinite, 
i. e.j a faith which they only suppose themselves to 
possess; because, from fear of their understanding, which 
has long been at issue with their faith, from fear of 
risking their feeble faith by bringing it to the light, 
that is, considering it in detail, they suppress the con- 
sequences, the necessary determinations of their faith, 
and conceal them from their understanding. 

§ 17. 

What faith denies on earth it affirms in heaven; what 
it renounces here it recovers a hundred-fold there. In this 
world, faith occupies itself with nullifying the body ; 
in the other world, with establishing it. Here the 
main point is the separation of the soul from the body, 
there the main point is the reunion of the body with 
the soul. " I would live not only according to the 
soul, but according to the body also. I would have 
the corpus with me ; I would that the body should re- 
turn to the soul and be united with it." — Luther (T. 
vii. p. 90). In that which is sensuous, Christ is super- 
sensuous ; but for that reason, in the supersensuous he 
is sensuous. Heavenly bliss is therefore by no means 
merely spiritual, it is equally corporeal, sensuous — a 
state in which all wishes are fulfilled. " Whatever 
thy heart seeks joy and pleasure in, that shall be there 
in abundance. For it is said, God shall be all in all. 
And where God is, there must be all good things that 
can ever be desired. 77 " Dost thou desire to see acutely, 
and to hear through walls, and to be so light that thou 
mayst be wherever thou wilt in a moment, whether 



408 APPENDIX. 

here below on the earth, or above in the clouds, that 
shall all be. and what more thou canst conceive, which 
thou couldst have in body and soul, thou shalt have 
abundantly if thou hast Him." — Luther (T. x. pp. 380, 
381). Certainly eating, drinking, and marriage find 
no place in the Christian heaven, as they do in the 
Mahomedan : but only because with these enjoyments 
want is associated, and with want matter, L e., passion, 
dependence, unhappincss. " Illic ipsa indigentia mo- 
rietur. Tunc vere dives eris, quando nullius indigens 
eris. ?; — Augustin. (Serm. ad pop. p. 77, c. 9). The 
pleasures of this earth are only medicines, says the 
same writer : true health exists only in immortal life 
— " vera sanitas, nisi quando vera immortalitas." The 
heavenly life, the heavenly body, is as free and un- 
limited as wishes, as omnipotent as imagination. "Fu- 
turae ergo resurrectionis corpus imperfectae felicitatis 
erit. si cibos sumere nonpoiv.erit, imperfectae felicitatis, 
si cibus efjiterit:' — Augustin. (Epist. 102, § 6, edit, cit.) 
Nevertheless, existence in a body without fatigue, with- 
out heaviness, without disagreeables, without disease, 
without mortality, is associated with the highest cor- 
poreal wellbeing. Even the know. }ge of God in 
heaven is free from any effort of thought or faith, is 
sensational, immediate knowledge — intuition. The 
Christians are indeed not agreed whe^er God, as God, 
the essentia Dei, will be visible to bodily eyes. (See, 
for example, Augustin Serm. ad pop. p. 277, and 
Buddeus, Comp. Inst. Th. 1. ii. c. 3, § 4.) But in this 
difference we again have only the contradiction be- 
tween the abstract and the real God ; the former is 
certainly not an object of vision, but the latter is so. 
" Flesh and blood is the wall between me and Christ, 
which will be torn away. . . There everything will be 
certain. For in that life the eyes will see, the mouth 
taste, and the nose smell it ; the treasure will shine 
into the soul and life. . . . Faith will cease, and I shall 
behold with my eyes." — Lather (T. ix. p. 595). It is 
clear from this again, that God, as he is an object of 



APPENDIX. 409 

religious sentiment, is nothing else than a product of 
the imagination. The heavenly beings are super sen- 
suous sensuous, immaterial material beings, i. e., beings 
of the imagination ; but they are like God, nay, iden- 
tical with God, consequently God also is a supersen- 
suous sensuous, an immaterial material being. 

§18. 

The contradiction in the Sacraments is the contradiction 
of naturalism and supernaturalism. In the first place 
the natural qualities of water are pronounced essential 
to Baptism. " Si quis dixerit aquam veram et natti- 
ralem non esse de necessitate Baptismi atque ideo verba 
ilia domini nostri Jesu Christi : Nisi quis renatus fuerit 
ex aqua et Spiritu sancto, ad metamorpham aliquam 
detorserit, anathema sit. — Concil. Trident. (Sessio vii. 
Can. ii. de Bapt.) De substantia hujus sacramenti sunt 
verbum et dementum. . . . Non ergo in alio liquore po- 
test consecrari baptismus nisi in aqua, — Petrus Lomb. 
(1. iv. dist. 3, c. 1, c. 5). Ad certitudinem baptismi 
requiritur major quam unius guttae quantitas. . . . Ne- 
cesse est ad valorem baptismi fieri contactum physicum 
inter aquam et cerrms baptizati, ita ut non sufficiat. 
vestes tantum ipsrus aqua tingi. . . . Ad certitudinem 
baptismi requiritur, ut saltern talis pars corporis ab- 
luatur, ratione cr ' homo solet dici vere ablutus, v. 6, 
collum, humeri, pectus et praesertim caput. — Theolog. 
Schol. ' (P. Mezger. Aug. Yind. 1695. T. iv. pp.230, 
231). Jlquam, eamque veram ac naturalem in baptismo 
adhibendam esse, exemplo Joannis . . . non minus vero 
et Apostolorum Act. viii. 36, x. 47, patet. — F. Buddeus 
(Com. Inst. Th. dog. 1. iv, c. i. § 5)." Thus water is 
essential. But now comes the negation of the natural 
qualities of water. The significance of Baptism is not 
the natural power of water, but the supernatural, al- 
mighty power of the Word of God, who instituted the 
use of water as a sacrament, and now by means of this 
element imparts himself to man in a supernatural, 
miraculous manner, but who could just as well have 

s 



410 APPENDIX. 

chosen any other element in order to produce the same 
effect. So Luther, for example, says : " Understand 
the distinction, that Baptism is quite another thing 
than all other water, not on account of its natural 
quality, but because here something more noble is 
added. For God himself brings hither his glory, 

power, and might as St. Augustine also hath 

taught : ' accedat verbum ad elementum et fit sacra- 
mentum.' " " Baptize them in the name of the Father, 

&c. Water without these words is mere water 

Who will call the baptism of the Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost mere water ? Do we not see what sort 
of spice God puts into this water ? When suger is 
thrown into water it is no longer water, but a costly 
claret or other beverage. Why then do we here 
separate the word from the water and say, it is mere 
water ; as if the word of God, yea, God himself, were 

not with and in the water Therefore, the water 

of Baptism is such a water as takes away sin, death, 
and unhappiness, helps us in heaven and to everlast- 
ing life. It is become a precious sugared water, aro- 
maticum, and restorative, since God has mingled him- 
self therewith. 77 — Luther (T. xvi. p. 105). 

As with the water in Baptism, which sacrament is 
nothing without water, though this water is neverthe- 
less in itself indifferent, so is it with the wine and 
bread in the Eucharist, even in Catholicism, where 
the substance of bread and wine is destroyed by the 
power of the Almighty. " Accidentia eucharistica 
tamdiu continent Christum, quamdiu retinent illud 
temperamentum, cum quo connaturaliter panis et vini 
substantia permanerct : ut econtra, quando tanta lit 
temperamenti dissolutio, illorumque corruptio, ut sub 
iis substantia panis et vini naturaliter rcmanere non 
posset desinunt continere Christum,"— Theol, Schol. 
(Mezger. 1. c. p. 2 ( .)2.) That is to say : so long as the 
bread remains bread, so long does the bread remain 
flesh ; when the bread is gone, the flesh is gone. There- 
fore a due portion of bread, at least enough to render 



APPENDIX. 411 

bread recognisable as such, must be present, for conse- 
cration to be possible. (lb. p. 284.) For the rest, 
Catholic transubstantiation, the conversio realis et phy* 
sica totius panis in corpus Christi, is only a consistent- 
continuation of the miracles of the Old and New Tes- 
taments. By the transformation of water into wine, of 
a staff into a serpent, of stones into brooks (Ps. cxiv.), 
by these biblical transubstantiations the Catholics ex- 
plained and proved the turning of bread-in to flesh. He 
who does not stumble at those transformations, has no 
right, no reason to hesitate at accepting this. The Pro- 
testant doctrine of the Lord's Supper is not less in con- 
tradiction with reason than the Catholic. " The body 
of Christ cannot be partaken otherwise than in two 
ways, spiritually or bodily. Again, this bodily par- 
taking cannot be visible or perceptible," i. e., is not 
bodily, " else no bread would remain. Again, it can- 
not be mere bread; otherwise it would not be a 
bodily communion of the body of Christ, but of bread. 
Therefore the bread broken must also be truly and 
corporeally the body of Christ, although invisibly 7 ' 
(t, e., incorporeally). — Luther (T. xix. p. 203). The 
difference is, that the Protestant gives no explanation 
concerning the mode in which bread can be flesh, and 
wine blood. " Thereupon we stand, believe, and 
teach, that the body of Christ is truly and corporeally 
taken and eaten in the Lord's Supper. But how this 
takes place, or how he is in the bread, we know not, 
and are not bound to know." — Id. (ut sup. p. 393.) 
" He who will be a Christian must not ask, as our 
fanatics and factionaries do, how it can be that bread 
is the body of Christ and wine the blood of Christ." 
— Id. (T. xvi. p. 220.) " Cum retineamus doctrinam 
de praesentia corporis Christi, quid opus est quae- 
rere de modo ?" — Melancthon (Vita Mel. Camerarius. 
Ed. Strobel. Halae, 1777. p. 446). Hence the Protes- 
tants as well as the Catholics took refuge in Omni- 
potence, the grand source of ideas contradictory 
to reason. — (Concord. Summ. Beg. Art. 7. Aff. 3. 
s2 



412 APPENDIX. 

Xegot. 13. See also Luther, e. g. T. xix. p. 400.) 
An instructive example of theological incomprehen- 
sibleness and supernaturalness is afforded by the dis- 
tinction, in relation to the Eucharist (Concordienb. 
Summ. Beg. art. 7), between partaking with the mouth 
and partaking in a fleshly or natural manner. " We 
believe, teach, and confess that the body of Christ is 
taken in the bread and wine, not alone spiritually by 
faith, but also with the mouth, yet not in a Capernai- 
tic, but a supernatural heavenly manner, for the sake 
of sacramental union." ' ; Probe namque discrimen 
inter manducationem oralem et naturalem tenendum 
est. Etsi enim oralem manducationem adseramus 
atque propugnemus, naturalem tamen non admittimus. 
Omnis equidem manducatio naturalis etiam ora- 
lis est, sed non vicissim oralis monducatio statim est 

naturalis Unicus itaque licet sit actus, unicum- 

que organum, quo panem et corpus Christi, itemque 
vinum et sanguinem Christi accipimus, modus (yes, 
truly, the mode) nihilominus maximopere differt, cum 
panem et vinum modo naturali et sensibili, corpus et 
sanguinem Christi simul equidem cum pane et vino, at 
modo supernaturali et insensibili qui adeo etiam a ne- 
mine mortalium (nor, assuredly, by any God) explicare 
potest, revera interim et ore corporis accipiamus" — 
Jo. Fr. Buddeus (1. c. Lib. v. c. i. § 15). 

§ 19. 

Dogma and Morality, Faith and Love, contradict each 
other in Christianity, It is true that God, the object 
of faith, is in himself the idea of the species in a mys- 
tical garb — the common Father of men — and so far 
love to God is mystical love to man. But God is not 
only the universal being ; he is also a peculiar, per- 
sonal being, distinguished from Love. Where the 
being is distinguished from love arises arbitrariness. 
Love acts from necessity, personality from will. Per- 
sonality proves itself as such only by arbitrariness; 
personality seeks dominion, is greedy of glory ; it 



APPENDIX. 413 

desires only to assert itself, to enforce its own author- 
ity. The highest worship of God as a personal being, 
is therefore the worship of God as an absolutely un- 
limited, arbitrary being. Personality, as such, is 
indifferent to all substantial determinations which lie 
in the nature of things ; inherent necessity, the coer- 
cion of natural qualities, appears to it a constraint. 
Here we have the mystery of Christian love. The 
love of God, as the predicate of a personal being, has 
here the significance of grace, favour : God is a gra- 
cious master, as in Judaism he was a severe master. 
Grace is arbitrary love, — love which does not act from 
an inward necessity of the nature, but which is equally 
capable of not doing what it does, which could, if it 
would, condemn its object ; thus it is a groundless, 
unessential, arbitrary, absolutely subjective, merely 
personal love. "He hath mercy on whom he will 
have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. (Rom. 
ix. 18.) . . . The king does what he will. So it is with 
the will of God. He has perfect right and full power 
to do with us and all creatures as he will. And no 
wrong is done to us. If His will had a measure or 
rule, a law, ground, or cause, it would not be the divine 
will. For what He wills is right, because He wills 
it. Where there is faith and the Holy Spirit .... it 
is believed that God would be good and kind even if 
He consigned all men to damnation. 'Is not Esau 
Jacob's brother ? said the Lord. Yet I have loved 
Jacob and hated Esau/ " — Luther (T. xix. pp. 83, 87, 
90, 91, 97.) Where love is understood in this sense, 
jealous watch is kept that man attribute nothing to 
himself as merit, that the merit may lie with the di- 
vine personality alone ; there every idea of necessity 
is carefully dismissed, in order, through the feeling of 
obligation and gratitude, to be able to adore and 
glorify the personality exclusively. The Jews deified 
the pride of ancestry ; the Christians, on the other 
hand, interpreted and transformed the Jewish aristo- 
cratic principle of hereditary nobility into the demo- 



414 APPENDIX. 

cratic principle of nobility of merit. The Jew makes 
salvation depend on birth, the Catholic on the merit 
of works, the Protestant on the merit of faith. But 
the idea of obligation and meritoriousness allies itself 
only with a deed, a work, which cannot be demanded 
of me, or which does not necessarily proceed from my 
nature. The works of the poet, of the philosopher, 
can be regarded in the light of merit only as considered 
externally. They are works of genius — inevitable 
products : the poet must bring forth poetry, the philo- 
sopher must philosophize. They have the highest 
satisfaction in the activity of creation, apart from any 
collateral or ulterior purpose. And it is just so with 
a truly noble moral action. To the man of noble 
feeling, the noble action is natural : he does not hes- 
itate whether he should do it or not, he does not place 
it in the scales of choice ; he must do it. Only he 
who so acts is a man to be confided in. Meritorious- 
ness always involves the notion that a thing is done, 
so to speak, out of luxury, not out of necessity. The 
Christians indeed celebrated the highest act in their 
religion, the act of God becoming man, as a work of 
love. But Christian love in so far as it reposes on 
faith, on the idea of God as a master, a Dorninus, has 
the significance of an art of grace, of a love in itself 
superfluous. A gracious master is one who foregoes 
his rights, a master who does out of graciousness what, 
as a master, he is not bound to do — what goes beyond 
the strict idea of a master. To God, as a master, it 
is not even a duty to do good to man ; lie has even 
the right — for he is a master bound by no law — to 
annihilate man if he will. In fact, mercy is optional, 
non-necessary love, love in contradiction with the 
essence of love, love which is not an inevitable mani- 
festation of the nature, love which the master, the 
subject, the person, (personality is only an abstract, 
modern expression lor sovereignty,) distinguishes from 
himself as a predicate, which he can either have or 
not have, without ceasing to be himself. This inter- 



APPENDIX. 415 

nal contradiction necessarily manifested itself in the 
life, in the practice of Christianity : it gave rise to 
the practical separation of the subject from the pre- 
dicate, of faith from love. As the love of God to man 
was only an act of grace, so also the love of man to 
man was only an act of favour or grace on the part 
of faith. Christian love is the graciousness of faith, 
as the love of God is the graciousness of personality 
or supremacy. (On the divine arbitrariness, see also 
J. A. Ernesti's treatise previously cited: "Vindicise 
arbitrii divini.") 

Faith has within it a malignant principle. Christian 
faith, and nothing else, is the ultimate ground of 
Christian persecution and destruction of heretics. 
Faith recognises man only on condition that he re- 
cognises God, i e., faith itself. Faith is the honour 
which man renders to God. And this honour is due 
unconditionally. To faith the basis of all duties is 
faith in God : faith is the absolute duty ; duties to 
men are only derivative, subordinate. The unbeliever 
is thus an outlaw* — a man worthy of extermination. 
That which denies God must be itself denied. The 
highest crime is the crime laesae majestatis Dei. To 
faith God is a personal being — the supremely personal, 
inviolable, privileged being. The acme of personality 
is honour ; hence an injury towards the highest per- 
sonality is necessarily the highest crime. The honour 
of God cannot be disavowed as an accidental, rude, 
anthropomorphic conception. For is not the person- 
ality, even the existence of God, a sensuous, anthro- 
pomorphic conception ? Let those who renounce the 
honour be consistent enough to renounce the person- 
ality. From the idea of personality results the idea 
of honour, and from this again the idea of religious 
offences. " Quicunque Magistratibus male precatus 
fuerit, pro eorum arbitrio poenas luito ; quicunque vero 
idem scelus erga Deum admiserit .... lapidibus bias* 

* " Haereticus usu omnium jurium destitutus est, ut deportatus."-— 
J. H. Boehmer (L c. 1. v. Tit. vii. § 223. See also Tit. vi.) 



416 APPENDIX. 

phemiae causa obruitur." — (Lev. xxiv. 15, 16. See 
also Deut. xii. whence the Catholics deduce the right 
to kill heretics. Boehmer, 1. c. 1. v. T. vii. § 44,) 
" Eos autem merito torqueri, qui Deum nesciunt, ut 
impios, ut injustos, nisi profanus nemo deliberat ; quum 
parentum omnium et dominum omnium non minus 
sceleres sit ignorare, quam laedereJ 1 — Minucii Fel. Oct. 
c. 35. "Ubi erunt legis praecepta divinae, quae dicunt : 
honora patrem et niatrem, si vocabulum patris, quod in 
homine honorari praecipitur, in Deo impune violatur ?" 
— Cypriani Epist. 73 (ed. Gersdorf.) " Cur enim, cum 
datum sit divinitus homini liberum arbitrium, adulteria 
legibus puniantur et sacrilegia permittantur ? An/idem 
non servare levins est animam Deo, quamfeminam vivo?" 
— Augustinus (de correct. Donatist. lib. ad Bonifacium, 
c. 5). t; Si hi qui nummos adulterant morte mulctantur, 
quid de illis statuendum censemus y qui Jidem pervertere 
conantur ?' 7 — Paulus Cortesius (in Sententias (Petri 
L.) iii. 1. dist. vii.) "Si enim illustrem ac praepoten- 
tem yirum nequaquam exhonorari a quoquam licet, et 
si quisquam exhonoraverit, decretis legalibus reus 
sistitur et injuriarum auctor jure damnatur : quanto 
utique majoris piaculi crimen est, injuriosum quemjoiam 
Deo esse? Semper enim per dignitatem injuriam per- 
ferentis crescit culpa facientis, quia necesse est, quanto 
major est persona ejus qui contumeliam patitur, tanto 
major sit noxa ejus, qui faeit." Thus speaks Salvianus 
(de gubernat. Dei, 1. vi. p. 218, edit, cit.) — Salvianus, 
who i3 called Magistrinn Episcoporum, sui saeculi 
Jeremiam, ScripAorem Cltristianissimum, Orbis chris- 
tiani mogistrum. But heresy, unbelief in general — 
heresy is only a definite, limited unbelief — is blasphemy, 
and thus is the highest, the most flagitious crime. Thus 
to cite only one among innumerable examples, J. Oeco- 
lampadius writes to Servetus: "Dnm non summam 
patientiam prae me fcro, dolens Jesum Christum filium 
Dei sic dehonestari, parum christiane tibi agcre videor. 
In aliis mansuetus ero : in blasphemiis quae in Christum, 
non item." (Historia Mich. Servcti. II. ab Alhvoerden 



APPENDIX. 417 

Helmstadii, 1737. p. 13.) For what is blasphemy? 
Every negation of an idea, of a definition, in which 
the honour of God, the honour of faith is concerned. 
Servetus fell as a sacrifice to Christian faith. Calvin 
said to Servetus, two hours before his death : " Ego 
vero ingenue praefatus, me nunquam privatus injurias 
fuisse persecutum/' and parted from him with a sense 
of being thoroughly sustained by the Bible : "ab haere- 
tico homine, qui au* o^ard^ptrocrpeccabat, secundum Pauli 
praec&ptum discessi. (Ibid. p. 120.) Thus it was by 
no means a personal hatred, though this may have been 
conjoined, — it was a religious hatred which brought 
Servetus to the stake— the hatred which springs from 
the nature of unchecked faith. Even Melancthon is 
known to have approved the execution of Servetus. 
The Swiss theologians, whose opinion was asked by 
the Genevans, very subtilely abstained, in their answer, 
from mentioning the punishment of death,* but agreed 
with the Genevans in this — "horrendos Serveti errores 
detestandos esse, severiusque idcirco in Servetum anim- 
advertendum. 77 Thus there is no difference as to the 
principle, only as to the mode of punishment. Even 
Calvin himself was so Christian as to desire to alleviate 
the horrible mode of death to which the Senate of 
Geneva condemned Servetus. (See on this subject, 
e. g., M. Adami Vita Calvini, p. 90. Vita Bezae, p. 
207. Vitae Theol. exter. Francof. 1618.) We have 
therefore to consider this execution as an act of general 
significance — as a work of faith, and that not of Roman 
Catholic, but of reformed, biblical, evangelical faith. 
— That heretics must not be compelled to a profession 
of the faith by force, was certainly maintained by most 
of the lights of the church, but there nevertheless lived 
in them the most malignant hatred of heretics. Thus, 

* Very many Christians rejected the punishment of death, but other 
criminal punishments of heretics, such as banishment, confiscation — 
punishments which deprive of life indirectly — they did not find in contra- 
diction with their Christian faith. — See on this subject J. H. Boehmer 
Jus. Eccl. Protest. 1. v. Tit. vii. e. g. §§ i. 155, 157, 162, 163. 

S3 



418 APPENDIX. 

for example, St. Bernard says (Super Cantica, § 66) in 
relation to heretics: "Fides suadenda est, non im- 
ponenda," but he immediately adds : "quamquam melius 
procul dubio gladio coercerentur, illius videlicet, qui 
non sine causa gladium portat. quam in suum errorem 
multos trajicere permittantur. w If the faith of the 
present day no longer produces such flagrant deeds of 
horror, this is due only to the fact that the faith of this 
age is not an uncompromising, living faith, but a scep- 
tical, eclectic, unbelieving faith, curtailed and maimed 
by the power of art and science. Where heretics are 
no longer burned either in the fires of this world or of 
the other, there faith itself has no longer any fire, any 
vitality. The faith which allows variety of belief re- 
nounces its divine origin and rank, degrades itself to 
a subjective opinion. It is not to Christian faith, not 
to Christian love (i. e., Jove limited by faith) ; no ! it is 
to doubt of Christian faith, to the victory of religious 
scepticism, to free-thinkers, to heretics, that ice owe toler- 
ance, freedom of opinion. It was the heretics, persecuted 
by the Christian church, who alone fought for freedom 
of conscience. Christian freedom is freedom in non- 
essentials only : on the fundamental articles of faith 
freedom is not allowed. When, however, Christian 
faith — faith considered in distinction from love, for 
faith is not one with love. k ' potestis habere fidem sine 
caritate' 7 (Augustinus Serm. ad pop. § 90) — is pro- 
nounced to be the principle, the ultimate ground of the 
violent deeds of Christians towards heretics (that is, 
Buch deeds as arose from real believing zeal) ; it is ob- 
viously not meant that faith could have these conse- 
quences immediately and originally, but only in its 
historical development. Still, even to the earliest 
Christians the heretic was an antichrist, and necessarily 
so — "adversus Christum sunt baerctici" (Cyprianus, 
Epist. 76, .^ 11. edit. <-it .) accursed — "apostoli .... 
in epistolis haereticos exsecrati sunt n (Cyprianus, ib. 
S 6) — a lost being, doomed by God to bell and ever- 
lasting death. " Thou dearest that the tares are al- 



APPENDIX. 419 

ready condemned and sentenced to the fire. Why then 
wilt thou lay many sufferings on a heretic? Dost thou 
not hear that he is already judged to a punishment 
heavier than he can bear ? Who art thou, that thou 
wilt interfere and punish him who has already fallen 
under the punishment of a more powerful master? 
What would I do against a thief already sentenced to 
the gallows ? . . . . God has already commanded his 
angels, who in his own time will be the executioners 
of heretics." — Luther (T. xvi. p. 132). When there- 
fore the State, the world, became Christian, and also, 
for that reason, Christianity became worldly, the 
Christian religion a State religion ; then it was a neces- 
sary consequence that the condemnation of heretics, 
which was at first only religious or dogmatic, became 
a political, practical condemnation, and the eternal 
punishment of hell was anticipated by temporal punish- 
ment. If therefore the definition and treatment of 
heresy as a punishable crime, is in contradiction with 
the Christian faith, it follows that a Christian king, a 
Christian State, is in contradiction with it ; for a 
Christian State is that which executes the Divine 
judgments of faith with the sword, which makes earth 
a heaven to believers, a hell to unbelievers. " Docui- 
mus . . . pertinere ad reges religioses, non solum adul- 
teria vel homicidia vel hujusmodi alia flagitia seu fa- 
cinora. verum etiam sacrilegia severitate congrua co- 
hibere" — Augustinus (Epist. ad Dulcitium). " Kings 
ought thus to serve the Lord Christ, by helping with 
laws that his honour be furthered. Now when the 
temporal magistracy finds scandalous errors, whereby 
the honour of the Lord Christ is blasphemed and men's 
salvation hindered, and a schism arises among the 
people . . . where such false teachers will not be ad- 
monished and cease from preaching : there ought the 
temporal magistracy confidently to arm itself and know 
that nothing else befits its office, but to apply the sword 
and all force, that doctrine may be pure and God's 
service genuine and unperverted, and also that peace 



420 APPENDIX. 

and unity may by preserved." — Luther (T. xv. pp. 
110, 111). Let it be further remarked here, that Au- 
gustine justifies the application of coercive measures 
for the awaking of Christian faith, by urging that the 
apostle Paul was converted to Christianity by a deed 
of force — a miracle. (De Correct. Donat. c. 6.) The 
intrinsic connexion between temporal and eternal, i. e., 
political and spiritual punishment is clear from this, 
that the same reasons which have been urged against 
the temporal punishment of heresy, are equally valid 
against the punishment of hell. If heresy or unbelief 
cannot be punished here because it is a mere mistake, 
neither can it be punished by God in hell. If coercion 
is in contradiction with the nature of faith, so is hell : 
for the fear of the terrible consequence of unbelief, the 
torments of hell, urge to belief against knowledge and 
will. Boehmer, in his Jus EccL, argues that heresy 
and unbelief should be struck out of the category of 
crirqes, that unbelief is only a vitium theologicum, a 
peccatum in Deum. But God, in the view of faith, is 
not only a religious, but a political, juridical being, 
the King of kings, the true head of the State. " There 
is no power but of God ... it is the minister of God."' 
Rom. xiii. 1, 4. If therefore the juridical idea of ma- 
jesty, of kingly dignity and honour, applies to God, 
sin against God, unbelief, must by consequence come 
under the definition of crime. And as with God, so 
with faith. Where faith is still a truth, and a public 
truth, there no doubt is entertained that it can be de- 
manded of every one, that every one is bound to be- 
lieve. Be it further observed, that the Christian 
Church has gone so far in its hatred against heretics, 
that according to the canon law even the suspicion of 
heresy is a crime, "ita ut de jure canonico rcvera crimen 
suspecti detur, eujus eanstentiam frustra in jure civili 
quaerimns" — Boehmer (1. c. v. Tit. vii. §§ 23 — 42). 

The command to love cm mies extends only to personal 
enemies, not to the enemies of God, the enemies of faith. 
"Does not the Lord Christ command that we should 



APPENDIX. 421 

love even our enemies ? How then does David here 
boast that he hates the assembly of the wicked, and 

sits not with the ungodly ? For the sake of the 

person I should love them ; but for the sake of the doe- 
trine I should hate them. And thus I must hate them 
or hate God, who commands and wills that we should 

cleave to his word alone What I cannot love 

with God I must hate ; if they only preach something 
which is against God, all love and friendship is de- 
stroyed ; — thereupon I hate thee, and do thee no good. 
For faith must be uppermost, and where the word of 

God is attacked, hate takes the place of love 

And so David means to say : I hate them, not because 
they have done injury and evil to me and led a bad 
and wicked life, but because they despise, revile, blas- 
pheme, falsify, and persecute the word of God." " Faith 
and love are two thing3. Faith endures nothing, love 
endures all things. Faith curses, love blesses : faith 
seeks vengeance and punishment, love forbearance and 
forgiveness." " Rather than God's word should fall 
and heresy stand, faith would wish all creatures to be 
destroyed : for through heresy men lose God himself." 
—Luther (T. vi.p. 94. T. v. pp. 624, 630). See also, 
on this subject, my treatise in the Deutsches Jahrb. and 
Augustini Enarret. in Psalm cxxxviii. (cxxxix.) As 
Luther distinguishes the 'person from the enemy of God, 
so Augustine here distinguishes the man from the 
enemy ofGod,from the unbeliever, and says : we should 
hate the ungodliness in the man, but love the humanity 
in him. But what, then, in the eyes of faith, is the 
man in distinction from faith, man without faith, L e., 
without God? Nothing ; for the sum of all realities, 
of all that is worthy of love, of all that is good and 
essential, is faith, and that which alone apprehends 
and possesses God. It is true that man as man is the 
image of God, but only of the natural God, of God as 
the Creator of Nature. But the Creator is only God 
as he manifests himself outwardly ; the true God, God 
as he is in himself, the inward essence of God, is the 



422 APPENDIX. 

triune God, is especially Christ. (See Luther T. xiv. 
pp. 2, 3 ? and T. xvi. p. 581.) And the image of this 
true, essential, Christian God, is only the believer, the 
Christian. Moreover, man is not to be loved for his 
own sake, but for God's. " Diligendus est proper 
Deurn, Deus vero propter se ipsum. i; (Augustinus de 
doctrina chr. 1. i. cc. 22, 27.) How, then, should the 
unbelieving man, who has no resemblance to the true 
God, be an object of love ? 

§ 20. 

Faith separates man from man, puts in the place of the 
natural unity founded in Nature and Love a supernatural 
unity — the unity of Faith. " Inter Christianum et 
gentilem non fides tantum debet, sed etiam vita distin- 

guere Xolite, ait Apostolus, jugum ducere 

cum infidelibus Sit ergo inter nos et idos maxima 

separcrtio" Hieronymus (Epist. Caelantise matronae) . . . 

" Prope nihil gravius quam copulari alienigeniae 

Nam cum ipsum conjugium velamine sacerdotali et 
benedictione sanctifican oporteat: quomodo potest con- 

jugium did. ubi non est jidei concordia ? Saepe 

plerique capti amore feminarum fidem suam prodide- 
runt." Ambrosius. (Ep. 70, Lib. ix.) ; * Non enim 
licet christiano cum gentili vel judaeo mire conju- 
gium. — Petrus L. (1. iv. dist. 39, c. 1). And this 
separation is by no means unbiblical. On the con- 
trary, we find that, in support of it, the Fathers appeal 
directly to the Bible. The well-known passage of the 
apostle Paul concerning marriage between heathens 
and Christians relates only to marriages which had 
taken place before conversion not to those which were 
yet to be contracted. Let the reader refer to what 
Peter Lombard -ays in the book already cited. "The 
firstChristians did not acknowledge, did not once listen 
to, all those relatives who sought to turn them away 
from the hope of the heavenly reward. This they did 
through the power of the Gospel, for the sake of which 
all love of kindred was to be despised : inasmuch 



APPENDIX. 423 

as . . . the brotherhood of Christ far surpassed natural 
brotherhood. To us the Fatherland and a common name 
is not so dear, but that we have a horror even of our 
parents, if they seek to advise something against the 
Lord.". — G. Arnold (Wahre Abbild. der ersten Chris- 
ten. B. iv. c. 2). Qui amat patrem et matrem plus 

quam me, non est me dignus Matth. x in hoc vos 

non agnosco parentes, sed hostes Alioquin quid 

mihi et vobis ? Quid a vobis liabeo nisi peccatam et 
miseriam?' 7 - — Bernardus (Epist. iii. Ex persona Heliae 
monachi ad parentes suos). " Etsi impium est, contem- 
nere matrem, contemnere tamen propter Christum piissi- 
mum est. 7; — Bernhardus (Ep.104. See also Epist. 351, ad 
Hugonem novitium). "Audi sententiam Isidori: multi 

canonicorum, monachorum temporali salute 

suorum parentum perdunt animas suas Servi Dei 

qui parentum suorum utilitatem procurant a Dei amore 
se separant." — Be Modobenevivendi (S.vii.) " Omnem 
hominem fidelem judica tuum esse fratrem." (Ibid. 
Sermo 13.) Ambrosius dicit, longe plus nos debere, 
diligere Jilios quos de fonte levamus, quam quos 
carnaliter genuimus" — Petrus L. 1. iv. dist. 6, c. 5, 
addit. Henr. ab Yurim.) " Infantes nascuntur cum 
peccato, nee fiunt haerecles vitae aeternae sine remis- 

sione peccati Cum igitur dubium non sit, in 

infantibus esse peccatum, debet aliquod esse discrimen 
infantium Ethnicorum, qui manent rei, et infantium in 
Ecclesia, qui recipiuntur a Deo per ministeriuni." — Me- 
lancthon (Loci de bapt. inf. Argum. II. Compare 
with this the passage abovq, cited from Buddeus, as a 
proof of the narrowness of the true believer 's love). 
" Ut Episcopi vel Clerici in eos, qui Ccdholici Christiani 
non sunt, etiam si consangv.inei fuerint, nee per dona- 
tiones rerum suarum aliquid conferant." — Concil. 
Carthag. III. can. 13. (Summa Carranza.) " Cum 
haereticis nee orandum, nee psaUendum" Concil. 
Carthag. IV. can. 72 (ibid.) 

Faith has the significance of religion, love only that of 
morality. This has been declared very decidedly by 



424 APPENDIX. 

Protestantism. The doctrine that love does not justify 
in the sight of God, but only faith, expresses nothing 
further than that love has no religious power and sig- 
nificance. (Apol. Augsb. Confess, art. 3. Of Love 
and the Fulfilment of the Law.) It is certainly here 
said : " What the scholastic writers teach concerning 
the love of God is a dream, and it is impossible to 
know and love God before we know and lay hold on 
mercy through faith. For then first does God become 
objectinn amabile, a loveable, blissful object of con- 
templation.' 7 Thus here mercy, love is made the pro- 
per object of faith. And it is true that faith is imme- 
diately distinguished from love only in this, that faith 
places out of itself what love places in itself. ; ' We 
believe that our justification, salvation, and consola- 
tion, lie out of ourselves." — Luther (T. xvi. p. 497. 
See also T. ix. p. 587). It is true that faith in the 
Protestant sense, is faith in the forgiveness of sins, 
faith in mercy, faith in Christ, as the God who suffer- 
ed and died for men, so that man, in order to attain 
everlasting salvation, has nothing further to do on his 
side than bclievingly to accept this sacrifice of God for 
him. But it is not as love only that God is an object 
of faith. On the contrary, the characteristic object of 
faith as faith, is God as a subject, a person. And is a 
God who accords no merit to man, who claims all ex- 
clusively for himself, who watches jealously over his 
honour — is a self-interested, egoistic God like this a 
God of love ? 

The morality which proceeds from faith has for its 
principle and criterion only the contradiction of Nature, 
of man. As the highest object of faith is that which 
most contradicts reason, the Eucharist, so necessarily 
the highest virtue of the morality which is true and 
obedient to faith, is that which most contradicts 
Nature. Dogmatic miracles have therefore moral mira- 
cles as their consequence, Antinatural morality is the 
twin sister of supernatural faith. As faith vanquishes 
Nature outside of man, so the morality of faith van- 



APPENDIX. 425 

quishcs Nature within man. This practical superna- 
turalism, the summit of which is " virginity, the sister 
of the angels, the queen of virtues, the mother of all 
good" (see A. v. Buchers : Geistliches Suchverloren. 
Saemintl. W. B. vi. 151) has been especially developed 
by Catholicism : for Protestantism has held fast only 
the principle of Christianity, and has arbitrarily elimi- 
nated its logical consequences, it has embraced only 
Christian faith and not Christian morality. In faith, 
Protestantism has brought man back to the stand-point 
of primitive Christianity ; but in life, in practice, in 
morality, it has restored him to the pre-Christian, the 
Old Testament, the heathen, adamitic, natural stand- 
point. God instituted marriage in paradise ; there- 
fore even in the present day, even to Christians, the 
command : Multiply ! is valid. Christ advises those 
only not to marry who " can receive" this higher rule. 
Chastity is a supernatural gift ; it cannot therefore 
be expected of every one. But is not faith also a 
supernatural gift, a special gift of God, a miracle, as 
Luther says innumerable times, and is it not neverthe- 
less commanded to us all ? Are not all men included 
in the command to mortify, blind and contemn the 
natural reason ? Is not the tendency to believe 
and accept nothing which contradicts reason, as 
natural, as strong, as necessary in us, as the sexual 
impulse ? If we ought to pray to God for faith be- 
cause by ourselves we are too weak to believe, why 
should we not on the same ground entreat God for 
chastity ? Will he deny us this gift if we earnestly 
implore him for it ? Never ! Thus we may regard 
chastity as a universal command equally with faith, 
for what we cannot do of ourselves, we can do through 
God. What speaks against chastity speaks against 
faith also, and what speaks for faith, speaks for chas- 
tity. One stands and falls with the other; with a 
supernatural faith is necessarily associated a super- 
natural morality. Protestantism tore this bond 
asunder : in faith it affirmed Christianity ; in life, 



426 APPENDIX. 

in practice, it denied Christianity, acknowledged the 
autonomy of natural reason, of man, — restored man to 
his original rights. Protestantism rejected celibacy, 
chastity, not because it contradicted the Bible, but 
because it contradicts man and Nature. "He who will 
be single renounces the name of man, and proves or 

makes himself an angel or spirit It is pitiable 

folly, to wonder that a man takes a wife, or for any 
one to be ashamed of doing so, since no one wonders 
that men are accustomed to eat and drink." — Luther 
(T. xix. pp. 368, 369). Does this unbelief as to the 
possibility and reality of chastity accord with the Bible, 
where celibacy is eulogized as a laudable and conse- 
quently a possible, attainable state ? No ! It is in 
direct contradiction with the Bible. Protestantism, 
in consequence of its practical spirit, and therefore by 
its own inherent force, repudiated Christian supra- 
naturalism in the sphere of morality. Christianity 
exists for it only in faith — not in law, not in morality, 
not in the State. It is true that love (the compendium 
of morality) belongs essentially to the Christian, so 
that where there is no love, where faith does not 
attest itself by love, there is no faith, no Christianity. 
Nevertheless love is only the outward manifestation 
of faith, only a consequence, and only human. "Faith 
alone deals with God, 7 '" "faith makes us gods;" love 
makes us merely men, and as faith alone is for God, 
so God is for faith alone, i. e., faith alone is the 
divine, the Christian in man. To faith belongs eter- 
nal life, to love only this temporal life. " Long before 
Christ came God gave this temporal, earthly life to 
the whole world, and said, that man should love Him 
and his neighbour. After that ho gave the world to 
hifl Son Christ, that we through and by him should have 

eternal life Moses and the law belong to this 

life, but for the other life we must have the Lord.' 7 — 
Luther (T. w i. p. 459). Tims although love belongs 
to the Christian, yet is the Christian a Christian only 
through this, that he believes in Christ. It is true 



APPENDIX. 427 

that to serve one's neighbour, in whatever way, rank 
or calling, is to serve God. But the God whom I serve 
in fulfilling a worldly or natural office, is only the uni- 
versal, mundane, natural, pre-christian God. Govern- 
ment, the State, marriage, existed prior to Christianity, 
was an institution, an ordinance of God, in which he 
did not as yet reveal himself as the true God, as Christ. 
Christ has nothing to do with all these worldly things ; 
they are external, indifferent to him. But for this 
very reason, every worldly calling and rank is com- 
patible with Christianity ; for the true, Christian 
service of God is faith alone, and this can be exercised 
everywhere. Protestantism binds men only in faith, 
all the rest it leaves free ; but only because all the 
rest is external to faith. 

It is true that we are bound by the commandments 
of Christian morality, as for example, " Avenge not 
yourselves," &c, but they have validity for us only as 
private, not as public persons. The world is govern- 
ed according to its own laws. Catholicism " mingled 
together the worldly and spiritual kingdoms, 77 i. e., it 
sought to govern the world by Christianity. But 
" Christ did not come on earth to interfere in the 
government of the Emperor Augustus and teach him 
how to reign.' 7 — Luther (T. xvi. p. 49). Where 
worldly government begins, Christianity ends ; there 
worldly justice, the sword, war, litigation, prevail. 
As a Christian I let my cloak be stolen from me with- 
out resistance, but as a citizen I seek to recover it by 
law. " Evangelium non abolet jus naturae." — Melanc- 
thon (de vindicta Loci. See also on this subject M. 
Chemnitii Loci theol. de vindicta). In fact, Protes- 
tantism is the practical negation of Christianity, the 
practical assertion of the natural man. It is true that 
Protestantism also commands the mortifying of the 
flesh, the negation of the natural man ; but apart from 
the fact that this negation has for Protestantism no re- 
ligious significance and efficacy, does not justify, i. e., 
make acceptable to God, procure salvation ; the nega- 



428 APPENDIX. 

tion of the flesh in Protestantism, is not distinguished 
from that limitation of the flesh which natural reason 
and morality enjoin on man. The necessary practical 
consequences of the Christian faith. Protestantism has 
relegated to the other world, to heaven — in other 
words, has denied them. In heaven first ceases the 
worldly stand-point of Protestantism ; there we no 
longer marry, there first we are new creatures ; but 
here everything remains as of old " until that life ; 
there the external life will be changed, for Christ did 
not come to change the creature." — Luther (T. xv. 
p. 62.) Here we are half heathens, half Christians; 
half citizens of the earth, half citizens of heaven. Of 
this division, this disunity, this chasm, Catholicism 
knows nothing. What it denies in heaven, L e., in 
faith, it denies also, as far as possible, on earth, i. e., 
in morality. " Grandis igitur virtutis est et sollici- 
tate diligentiae, superare quod nata sis: in came non 
carnaliter vivere, tecum pugnare quotidie." — Hierony- 
mus (Ep. Furiae Rom. nobilique viduae). "Quanto 
igitur natura amplius vincitur et premitur, tan to major 
gratia infunditur." — Thomas a K. (imit. 1. iii. c. 54). 
" Esto robustus tarn in agendo, quam in patiendo na- 
turae ooritraria" (ibid. c. 49;. "Beatus ille homo, qui 
propter te, Domine, omnibus creaturis' licentiam 
abeundi tribuit, qui naturae vim facit et concupiscen- 
tias carnis fervorc spiritus crucifigit" (c. 48.) " Adhuc 
proh dolor! vivit in me verus homo, non est totus cru- 
eifixus" (Ibid. c. 34, 1. iii. c. 19, 1. ii. c. 12). And 
these dicta by no means emanate simply from the 
pious individuality of the author of the work de Imita- 
tions Christi: they express the genuine morality of 
Catholicism, that morality which the saints attested 
by their lives, and which was sanctioned even by the 
Head of the Church, otherwise so worldly. Thus it 
18 said, for example, in the Canonizatio S. Bernhardi 
Abbatis per Alexandrian papain \li. anno Ch. 1164. 

Litt. spoflt primo ad. Praelatos Eccles. Gallic: 

11 In afflictions vero corporis sui usque adeo sibi mun- 



APPENDIX, 429 

dum, seque mundo reddidit crucifixum, ut confidamus 
martyrum quoque eummerita obtinere sanctorum etc." 
It was owing to this purely negative moral principle, 
that there could be enunciated within Catholicism 
itself the gross opinion that mere martyrdom, without 
the motive of love to God, obtains heavenly bles- 
sedness. 

It is true that Catholicism also in practice denied 
the supranaturalistic morality of Christianity ; but 
its negation has an essentially different significance 
from that of Protestantism : it is a negation de facto 
but not dejiire. The Catholic denied in life what he 
ought to have affirmed in life, — as, for example, the 
vow of chastity, — what he desired to affirm, at least 
if he was a religious Catholic, but which in the nature 
of things he could not affirm. Thus he gave validity 
to the law of Nature, he gratified the flesh, in a word, 
he was a man, in contradiction with his essential 
character, his religious principle and conscience. 
Adliuc proli dolor! vivit in me vents homo. Catholic- 
ism has proved to the world that the supernatural 
principle of faith in Christianity, applied to life, made 
a principle of morals, has immoral, radically corrupt- 
ing consequences. This experience Protestantism 
made use of, or rather this experience called forth 
Protestantism. It made the illegitimate, practical 
negation of Christianity — illegitimate in the sense of 
true Catholicism, though not in that of the degenerate 
church — the law, the norm of life. You cannot in life, 
at least in this life, be Christians, peculiar, super- 
human beings, therefore ye ought not to be such. And 
it legitimized this negation of Christianity before its 
still Christian conscience, by Christianity itself, pro- 
nounced it to be Christian ; — no wonder, therefore, 
that now at last modern Christianity not only practi- 
cally but theoretically represents the total negation 
of Christianity as Christianity. When, however, Pro- 
testantism is designated as the contradiction, Catho- 
licism as the unity of faith and practice, it is obvious 



430 APPENDIX. 

that in both cases we refer only to the essence, to the 
principle. 

Faith sacrifices man to God. Human sacrifice belongs 
to the very idea of religion. Bloody human sacrifices 
only dramatize this idea. "By faith Abraham offered 
up Isaac/' — Heb. xi. 17. ;; Quanto major Abraham, 

qui unicum filium voluntate jugulavit Jepte ob- 

tulit virginem filiam et idcirco in enumeratione sanc- 
torum ab Apostolo ponitur." — Hieronymus (Epist. 
Juliano.) On the human sacrifices in the Jewish reli- 
gion we refer the reader to the works of Daumer and 
Ghillany. In the Christian religion also it is only 
blood, the sacrifice of the Son of Man, which allays 
God's anger and reconciles him to man. Therefore a 
pure, guiltless man must fall a sacrifice. Such blood 
alone is precious, such alone has reconciling power. 
And this blood, shed on the cross for the allaying of 
the divine anger, Christians partake in the Lord's 
Supper, for the strengthening and sealing of their faith. 
But why is the blood taken under the form of wine, 
the flesh under the form of bread? That it may not 
appear as if Christians ate real human flesh and drank 
human blood, that the natural man may not shrink 
from the mysteries of the Christian faith. u Etenim 
ne humana infirmitas esum carnis et potum sanguinis 
in sumptionc Itorrcret. Christus velar i et pdUiari ilia 
duo voluit speciebus panis et viiii." — Bernard (edit. cit. 
pp. 189 — 191). "Sub alia autem specie tribus de 
caosis carnem et sanguinem tradit Christus etdeinceps 
sumendum instituit. Ut fides scil. haberet meritum, 
quae est de his quae non videntur. quod fides non habet 
ubi humana ratio praebct experimcntum. Et 
ideo etiam ne abhorreret animus quod cerneret oculus; 
quod non habemus in usu carnen crudam comedere et 

8 mgvi I'm bibere Et etiam ideo ne ab ineredulis 

oni christianae instdtaretur. Unde Augustinus : 
Nihil rationabilius, quam ut sanguinis similitu- 
dinem Bomamus, ut et ita Veritas non desit etridicidum 
nuUvmfiat a pagards, quod cruorem occisi hominis 



APPENDIX. 431 

bibamus." — Petrus Lomb. (Sent. lib. iv. dist. ii. 
c. 4). 

But as the bloody human sacrifice, while it expresses 
the utmost abnegation of man, is at the same time the 
highest assertion of his value ; — for only because human 
life is regarded as the highest, because the sacrifice of 
it is the most painful, costs the greatest conquest over 
feeling, is it offered to God ;— so the contradiction of 
the Eucharist with human nature is only apparent. 
Apart from the fact that flesh and blood are, as St. 
Bernard says, clothed with bread and wine, i. e., that 
in truth it is not flesh but bread, not blood but wine, 
which is partaken, — the mystery of the Eucharist re- 
solves itself into the mystery of eating and drinking. 

"All ancient Christian doctors teach that tho 

body of Christ is not taken spiritually alone by faith, 
which happens also out of the Sacraments, but also cor- 
poreally; not alone by believers, by the pious, but also 
by unworthy, unbelieving, false and wicked Chris- 
tians. 77 "There are thus two ways of eating Christ's 
flesh, one spiritual .... such spiritual eating however 
is nothing else than faith .... The other way of eat- 
ing the body of Christ is to eat it corporeally or sa- 
cramentally. 77 (Concordienb. Erkl. art. 7.) "The 
mouth eats the body of Christ bodily. 77 — Luther 
(against the "fanatics.' 7 T. xix. p. 417). What then 
forms the specific difference of the Eucharist ? Eating 
and drinking. Apart from the Sacrament, God is par- 
taken of spiritually; in the Sacrament he is partaken 
of materially, i. e., he is eaten and drunken, assimilated 
by the body. But how couldst thou receive God into 
thy body, if it were in thy esteem an organ unworthy 
of God? Dost thou pour wine into a water-cask? 
Dost thou not declare thy hands and lips holy, when 
by means of them thou comest in contact with the 
Holy One ? Thus if God is eaten and drunken, eating 
and drinking is declared to be a divine act ; and this 
is what the Eucharist expresses, though in a self-con- 
tradictory, mystical, covert manner. But it is our 



432 APPENDIX. 

task to express the mystery of religion, openly and 
honourably, clearly and definitely. Life is God; the 
enjoyment of life is the enjoyment of God; true bliss in 
life is true religion. But to the enjoyment of life be- 
longs the enjoyment of eating and drinking. If there- 
fore life in general is holy, eating and drinking must 
be holy. Is this an irreligious creed ? Let it be re- 
membered that this irreligion is the analyzed, unfold- 
ed, uneqivocally expressed mystery of religion itself. 
All the mysteries of religion ultimately resolve them- 
selves, as we have shown, into the mystery of heavenly 
bliss. But heavenly bliss is nothing else than happi- 
ness freed from the limits of reality. The Christians 
have happiness for their object just as much as the hea- 
thens ; the only difference is, that the heathens place 
heaven on earth, the Christians place earth in heaven. 
Whatever is, whatever is really enjoyed, is finite ; that 
which is not, which is believed in and hoped for, is in- 
finite. 

§21. 

The Christian religion is a contradiction. It is at 
once the reconciliation and the disunion, the unity and 
the opposition of God and man. This contradiction is 
personified in the God-Man. The unity of the Godhead 
and manhood is at once a truth and an untruth. We 
have already maintained that if Christ was God, if he 
was at once man and another being conceived as inca- 
pable of suffering, his suffering was an illusion. For his 
suffering as man was no suffering to him as God. No ! 
what he acknowledged as man he denied as God. He 
suffered only outwardly, not inwardly; i. e., he suffer- 
ed only apparently, not really ; for he was man only 
in appearance, in form, in the external ; in truth, in 
essence, in which alone he was an object to the believer, 
he was God. It would have been true suffering only 
if he had suffered as God also. What he did not ex- 
perience in his nature as God, he did not experience in 
truth, in substance. And, incredible as it is, the 



APPENDIX. 433 

Christians themselves half directly, half indirectly, 
admit that their highest, holiest mystery is only an 
illusion, a simulation. This simulation indeed lies at 
the foundation of the thoroughly unhistorical * thea- 
trical, illusory Gospel of John. One instance, among 
others, in which this is especially evident, is the resur- 
rection of Lazarus, where the omnipotent arbiter of 
life and death evidently sheds tears only in ostentation 
of his manhood, and expressly says : " Father, I thank 
thee that thou hast heard me, and I know that thou ' 
hearest me always, but for the sake of the people who 
stand round I said it, that they may believe in thee." 
The simulation thus indicated in the Gospel has been 
developed by the Church into avowed delusion. "Si 
credas susceptionem corporis, adjungas divinitatis com- 
passionem, portionem utique perfidiae, non perfidiam 
declinasti. Credis enim, quod tibi prodesse praesumis, 
non credis quod Deo dignum est ... . Idem enim patie- 

batur et non patiebatur Patiebatur secundum 

corporis susceptionem, ut suscepti corporis Veritas ere- 
deretur et non patiebatur secundum verbi impassibilem 
divinitatem. . . . Erat igitur immortalis in morte, im- 
passibilis in passione. .... Cur divinitati attribuis 
aerumnas corporis et infirmum doloris humani divines 
connectis naturae V 1 — Ambrosius (de incarnat. domin. 
sacr. cc. 4, 5). " Juxta hominis naturam proficiebat 
sapientia, non quod ipse sapientior esset ex tempore. 

sed eandem, qua plenus erat, sapientiam caeteris 

ex tempore paulatim demonstrabat In aliis ergo 

non in se proficiebat sapientia et gratia." — Gregorius 
in homil. quadam (ap. Petrus Lomb. 1. iii. dist. 13, 
c. 1). " Proficiebat ergo humanus sensus in eo secun- 
dum ostensionem et aliorum hominum opinionem. Ita 
enim patrem et matrem dicitur ignorasse in infantia, 
quia ita se gerebat et habebat ac si agnitionis expers esset." 

* On this subject I refer to Liitzelberger's work : " Die Kirchliche 
Tradition liber den Apostel Johannes und seine Schriften in ihrer Grund- 
losigkeit nachgewiesen," and to Bruno Bauer's " Kritik der Evange- 
lischen Geechichte der Synoptiker und des Johannes." (B. iii.) 

T 



434 APPENDIX. 

Petrus L. (ibid. c. 2). " Ut homo ergo dubitat, ut 
homo locutus est." — Ambrosius. "His verbis innui 
videtur, quod Christus non inquantum Deus vel Dei 
filius, sed inquantum homo dubitaverit affectu hu- 
mano. Quod ea ratione dictum accipi potest : non 
quod ipse dubitaverit, sed quod modum gessit dubi- 
tantis et hominibus dubitare videbatur." — Petrus L. 
(ibid. dist. 17, c. 2.) In the first part of the pre- 
sent work we have exhibited the truth, in the second 
part the untruth of religion, or rather of theology. 
The truth is only the identity of God and man. 
Religion is truth only when it affirms human attri- 
butes as divine, falsehood when, in the form of theo- 
logy, it denies these attributes, separating God from 
man as a different being. Thus, in the first part 
we had to show the truth of God's suffering ; here 
we have the proof of its untruth, and not a proof * 
which lies in our own subjective view, but an ob- 
jective proof — the admission of theology itself, that 
its highest mystery, the Passion of God, is only a 
deception, an illusion. It is therefore in the highest 
degree uncritical, untruthful and arbitrary, to explain 
the Christian religion, as speculative philosophy has 
done, only as the religion of reconciliation between 
God and man, and not also as the religion of dis- 
union between the Divine and human nature, — to 
find in the God-Man only the unity, and not also the 
contradiction of the divine and human nature. Christ 
suffered only as man, not as God. Capability of suf- 
fering is the sign of real humanity. It was not as 
God that he was born, that he increased in wisdom, 
and was crucified ; i. e., all human conditions remained 
foreign to him as God. "Si quis non confitetur pro- 
prie et vere substantialem differentiam naturarum 
post ineffabilem unionem, ex quibus unus et solus ex- 
titit Christus, in ea salvatam, sit condemnatus." — 
Concil. Later. I. can. 7. (Garranza.) The divine nature, 
notwithstanding the position that Christ was at once 
God and man, is just as much dissevered from the 



APPENDIX. 435 

human nature in the Incarnation as before it, since 
each nature excludes the conditions of the other, 
although both are united in one personality, in an in- 
comprehensible, miraculous, i. e., untrue manner, in 
contradiction with the relation in which, according to 
their definition, they stand to each other. Even the 
Lutherans, nay Luther himself, however strongly he 
expresses himself concerning the community and union 
of the human and divine nature in Christ, does not 
escape from the irreconcilable division between them. 
" God is man, and man is God, but thereby neither the 
natures nor their attributes are confounded, but each 
nature retains its essence and attributes. 77 " The Son 
of God himself has truly suffered, and truly died, but 
according to the human nature which he had assumed ; 
for the divine nature can neither suffer nor die." " It is 
truly said, the Son of God suffers. For although the 
one part (so to speak), as the Godhead, does not suffer, 
still the Person who is God suffers in the other half, the 
manhood ; for in truth the Son of God was crucified 
for us, that is, the Person who is God ; for the Person 
is crucified according to his manhood." "It is the person 
that does and suffers all, one thing according to this 
nature, another according to that nature, all which the 
learned well know." (Concordienb. Erklar. art. 8.) 
" The Son of God and God himself is killed and mur- 
dered, for God and man is one Person. Therefore 
God was crucified, and died, and became man ; not 
God apart from humanity, but united with it; not 
according to the Godhead, but according to the 
human nature which he had assumed." — Luther (T. iii. 
p. 502). — Thus only in the Person, i. e., only in a nomen 
proprium, not in essence, not in truth, are the two 
natures united. " Quando dicitur : Deus est homo vel 
homo est Deus, propositio ejusmodi vocatur personalis. 
Ratio est, quia unionem personalem in Christo suppo- 
nit. Sine tali enim naturarum in Christo unione nun- 
quam dicere potuissem, Deum esse hominem aut homi- 
nem esse Deum Abstracts autem naturae de se 



436 APPENDIX. 

inviceni enuntiari non posse, longe est manifestissimum. 
.... Dicere itaqne non licet, divina natura est humana 
aut deitas est huinanitas et vice versa. " J. F. Buddeus 
(Comp. Inst. Theol. dogm. 1. iv. c. ii. § 11). Thus the 
union of the divine and human natures in the Incarna- 
tion is only a deception, an illusion. The old dissi- 
dence of God and man lies at the foundation of this 
dogma also, and operates all the more injuriously, is 
all the more odious, that it conceals itself behind the 
appearance, the imagination of unity. Hence Socini- 
anism, far from being superficial when it denied the 
Trinity and the God-Man, "was only consistent, only 
truthful. God was a triune being, and yet he was to 
be held purely simple, absolute unity, an ens simplicis- 
simum ; thus the Unity contradicted the Trinity. God 
was God-Man, and yet the Godhead was not to be 
touched or annulled by the manhood, L e., it was to be 
essentially distinct ; thus the incompatibility of the 
Divine and human attributes contradicted the unity of 
the two natures. According to this, we have in the 
very idea of the God-Man the arch-enemy of the God- 
Man, — rationalism, blended, however, with its opposite 
— mysticism. Thus Socinianism only denied what faith 
itself denied, and yet, in contradiction with itself, at 
the same time affirmed ; it only denied a contradiction, 
a£ untruth. 

Nevertheless the Christians have celebrated the In- 
carnation as a work of love, as a self-renunciation of 
God, an abnegation of his majesty — Amor trium'pliat 
de Deo; for the love of God is an empty word, if it is 
understood as a real abolition of the distinction be- 
tween Him and man. Thus we have, in the very 
central point of Christianity, the contradiction of Faith 
and Love developed in the close of the present work. 
Faith makes the suffering of God a mere appearance, 
love makes it a truth. Only on the truth of the suffer- 
ing rests the true positive impression of the Incarna- 
tion. Strongly, then, as we have insisted on the con- 
tradiction and division between the divine and the 



APPENDIX. 437 

human nature in the God-Man, we must equally insist 
on their community and unity, in virtue of which God 
is really man and man is really God. Here then we 
have the irrefragable and striking proof that the central 
point, the supreme object of Christianity, is nothing 
else than man, that Christians adore the human indi- 
vidual as God, and God as the human individual. "This 
man born of the Virgin Mary is God himself, who has 
created heaven and earth." — Luther (T. ii. p. 671.) 
" I point to the man Christ and say : that is the son of 
God."— (T. xix. p. 594.) "To give life, to have all 
power in heaven and earth, to have all things in his 
hands, all things put under his feet, to purify from sin, 
and so on, are divine, infinite attributes which, accord- 
ing to the declaration of the Holy Scriptures, are given 
and imparted to the man Christ." "Therefore we 
believe, teach, and confess that the Son of man . . . now 
not only as God, but also as man, knows all things, 
can do all things, is present with all creatures." "We 
reject and condemn the doctrine that he (the Son of 
God) is not capable according to his human nature of 
omnipotence and other attributes of the divine nature." 
(Concordienb. Summar. Begr. u. Erklaer. art. 8.) "Unde 
et sponte sua Suit, Christo etiam qua humanam naturam 
spectato cidtum religiosum deberi.' 1 — Buddeus (1. c. 1. iv. 
c. ii. § 17). The same is expressly taught by the Fa- 
thers and the Catholics, e. g., " Eadem adoratione 
adorancla in Christo est divinitas et humanitas . . . Di- 
vinitas intrinsece inest humanitati per unionem hyposta- 
ticam : ergo humanitas Christi seu Christus ut homo 
potest adorari absoluto cultu latriae." — Theol. Schol. 
(sec. Thomam Aq. P. Metzger. iv. p. 124.) It is cer- 
tainly said, that it is not man, not flesh and blood by 
itself which is worshipped, but the flesh united with 
God, so that the cultus applies not to the flesh, or man, 
but to God. But it is here as with the worship of 
saints and images. As the saint is adored in the image, 
and God in the saint, only because the image and the 
saint are themselves adored, so God is worshipped in 

t3 



438 APPENDIX. 

the human body, only because the human flesh is itself 
worshipped. God becomes flesh, man, because man is 
in truth already God. How could it enter into thy 
mind to bring the human flesh into so close a relation 
and contact with God, if it were something impure, 
degrading, unworthy of God ? If the value, the dignity 
of the human flesh does not lie in itself, why dost thou 
not make other flesh — the flesh of brutes, the habita- 
tion of the divine spirit ? True, it is said : Man is 
only the organ, in, with and by which the Godhead 
works, as the soul in the body. But this pretext also 
is refuted by what has been said above. God chose 
man as his organ, his body, because only in man did 
he find an organ worthy of him, suitable, pleasing to 
him. If the nature of man is indifferent, why did not 
God become incarnate in a brute ? Thus God comes 
into man only out of man. The manifestation of God 
in man is only a manifestation of the divinity and glory 
of man. " Noscitur ex alio, qui non cognoscitur ex 
se" — this trivial saying is applicable here. God is 
known through man, whom he honours with his personal 
presence and indwelling, and known as a human being, 
for what any one prefers, selects, loves, is his objective 
nature ; and man is known through God, and known 
as a divine being, for only that which is worthy of 
God, which is divine, can be the object, organ and 
habitation of God. True, it is further said : it is Jesus 
Christ alone, and no other man, who is worshipped as 
God. But this argument also is idle and empty. 
Christ is indeed one only, but he is one who represents 
all. He is a man as we are, " our brother, and we are 
flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone." " In Jesus 
Christ our Lord every one of us is a portion of flesh 
and blood. Therefore where my body is, there I be- 
lieve that I myself reign. Where my flesh is glorified, 
there I believe that I am myself glorious. Where my 
blood rules, there 1 hold that I myself rule.' 7 — Luther 
(T. xvi. p. 534). This then is an undeniable fact : 
Christians worship the human individual as the su- 



APPENDIX. 439 

preme being, as God. Not indeed consciously, for it is 
the unconsciousness of this fact which constitutes the 
illusion of the religious principle. But in this sense it 
may be said that the heathens did not worship the sta- 
tues of the gods ; for to them also the statue was not a 
statue, but God himself. Nevertheless they did worship 
the statue ; just as Christians worship the human 
individual, though, naturally, they will not admit it. 

§ 22. 
Man is the God of Christianity r 5 Anthropology the 
Mystery of Christian Theology. The history of Chris- 
tianity has had for its grand result the unveiling of 
this mystery — the realization and recognition of theo- 
logy as anthropology. The distinction between Pro- 
testantism and Catholicism — the old Catholicism, 
which now exists only in books, not in actuality — 
consists only in this, that the latter is Theology, the 
former Christology, i. e. (religious) Anthropology. 
Catholicism has a supranaturalistic, abstract God, a 
God who is other than human, a not human, a super- 
human being. The goal of Catholic morality, likeness 
to God, consists therefore in this, to be not a man, but 
more than a man — a heavenly abstract being, an angel. 
Only in its morality does the essence of a religion 
realize, reveal itself: morality alone is the criterion 
whether a religious dogma is felt as a truth, or is a 
mere chimera. Thus the doctrine of a superhuman, 
supernatural God is a truth only where it has as its 
consequence a superhuman, supernatural, or rather 
antinatural morality. Protestantism, on the contrary, 
has not a supranaturalistic but a human morality, a 
morality of and for flesh and blood ; consequently its 
God, at least its true, real God, is no longer an ab- 
stract, supranaturalistic being, but a being of flesh and 
blood. "This defiance the devil hears unwillingly, 
that our flesh and blood is the Son of God, yea, God 
himself, and reigns in heaven over all." — Luther (T. 
xvi. p. 573.) " Out of Christ there is no God, and 



440 APPENDIX. 

where Christ is, there is the whole Godhead." — Id. 
(T. xix. p. 403.) Catholicism has, both in theory and 
practice, a God, who, in spite of the predicate of love, 
exists for himself, to whom therefore man only comes 
by being against himself, denying himself, renouncing 
his existence for self; Protestantism, on the contrary, 
has a God who, at least practically, virtually, has not 
an existence for himself, but exists only for man, for 
the welfare of man. Hence in Catholicism the highest 
act of the cultus, " the mass of Christ," is a sacrifice 
of man, — the same Christ, the same flesh and blood, is 
sacrificed to God in the Host as on the cross ; in Pro- 
testantism, on the contrary, it is a sacrifice, a gift, of 
God : God sacrifices himself, surrenders himself to be 
partaken by man. — See Luther, e. g., (T. xx. p. 259. 
T. xvii. p. 529.) In Catholicism manhood is the pro- 
perty, the predicate of the Godhead (of Christ) — God 
is man ; in Protestantism, on the contrary, Godhead 
is the property, the predicate of manhood (Christ) — 
man is God. " This, in time past, the greatest theo- 
logians have done — they have fled frtfm the manhood 
of Christ to his Godhead, and attached themselves to 
that alone, and thought that we should not know the 
manhood of Christ. But we must so rise to the God- 
head of Christ, and hold by it in such a way, as not 
to forsake the manhood of Christ and come to the 
Godhead alone. Thou shouldst know of no God, nor 
Son of God, save him who was born of the Virgin 
Mary and became man. He who receives his manhood 
has also his Godhead. 7 '— Luther (T. ix. pp. 592, 598.)* 
Or, briefly thus : in Catholicism, man exists for God ; 
in Protestantism, God exists for man.t " Jesus Christ 
our Lord was conceived for us, born for us, suffered 
for us, was crucified, died and was buried for us. Our 
Lord rose from the dead for our consolation, sits for 

• In another place LutheT prai* St Bernard and Bonaventnra, be- 
they laid bo much stress on the manhood of Christ. 

f It is true that in Catholicism also — m Christianity generally, God 
exists for man ; but it was Protestantism which first drew from tbis re- 
lativity of God itb true result — the absoluteness of man. 



APPENDIX. 441 

our good at the right hand of the Almighty Father, 
and is to judge the living and the dead for our comfort. 
This the holy Apostles and beloved Fathers intended 
to intimate in their confession by the words : Us and 
our Lord— namely, that Jesus Christ is ours, whose 
office and will it is to help us ... so that we should 
not read or speak the words coldly, and interpret them 
only of Christ, but of ourselves also." — Luther (T. 
xvi. p. 538.) "I know of no God but him who gave 
himself for me. Is not that a great thing that God is 
man, that God gives himself to man and will be his, 
as man gives himself to his wife and is hers ? But if 
God is ours, all things are ours." (T. xii. p. 283.) 
" God cannot be a God of the dead, who are nothing, 
but is a God of the living. If God were a God of the 
dead, he would be as a husband who had no wife, or 
as a father who had no son, or as a master who had 
no servant. For if he is a husband, he must have a 
wife. If he is a father, he must have a son. If he is 
a master, he must have a servant. Or he would be a 
fictitious father, a fictitious master, that is, nothing. 
God is not a God like the idols of the heathens, 
neither is he an imaginary God, who exists for him- 
self alone, and has none who call upon him and wor- 
ship him. A God is He from whom everything is to 
be expected and received. ... If he were God for 
himself alone in heaven, and we had no good to rely 
on from him, he would be a God of stone or straw. . . 
If he sat alone in heaven like a clod, he would not be 
God." (T. xvi. p. 465.) " God says : I the Almighty 
Creator of heaven and earth am thy God. ... To be 
a God means to redeem us from all evil and trouble 
that oppresses us, as sin, hell, death, &c." (T. ii. p. 
327.) u All the world calls that a God, in whom man 
trusts in need and danger, on whom he relies, from 
whom all good is to be had and who can help. Thus 
reason describes God, that he affords help to man, and 
does good to him, bestows benefits upon him. This 
thou seest also in this text : ' I am the Lord thy God, 



4,42 APPENDIX. 

who brought thee out of the land of Egypt. 7 There 
we are taught what God is, what is his nature, and 
what are his attributes, — namely, that he does good, 
delivers from dangers, and helps out of trouble and 
all calamities. 7 ' (T. iv. pp. 236, 237.) But if God is 
a living, L e., real God, is God in general, only in 
virtue of this — that he is a God to man, a being who 
is useful, good, beneficent to man ; then, in truth, man 
is the criterion, the measure of God, man is the abso- 
lute, divine being. The proposition : A God existing 
only for himself is no God — means nothing else than 
that God without man is not God ; where there is no 
man there is no God ; if thou takest from God the 
predicate of humanity, thou takest from him the pre- 
dicate of deity ; if his relation to man is done away 
with, so also is his existence. 

Nevertheless Protestantism, at least in theory, has 
retained in the background of this human God the old 
supranaturalistic God. Protestantism is the contra- 
diction of theory and practice ; it has emancipated 
the flesh, but not the reason. According to Protes- 
tantism, Christianity, i.e., God, does not contradict 
the natural impulses of man : — " Therefore, we ought 
now to know, that God does not condemn or abolish 
the natural tendency in man, which was implanted in 
Nature at the creation, but that he awakens and pre- 
serves it." — Luther (T. iii. p. 290.) But it contradicts 
reason and is therefore, theoretically, only an object 
of faith. We have shown, however, that the nature 
of faith, the nature of God, is itself nothing else than 
the nature of man placed out of man, conceived as ex- 
ternal to man. The reduction of the extrahuman, super- 
natural, and anti-rational nature of God to the natural, 
immanent, inborn nature of man, is therefore the libera- 
tion of Protestantism, of Christianity in general, from 
its fundamental contradiction, the reduction of it to its 
truth, — the result, tin' necessary, irrepressible, irrefrag- 
able result of Christianity. 

THE END. 



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